Barnsley

The Ghana full-back speaks on their target for the remainder of the campaign

Yiadom talks up Barnsley season ambitions

The Ghana full-back speaks on their target for the remainder of the campaign

Bullseye was the must watch show when I was a boarder at Eton

Ok so the great Stephen Hawking has died; a man who told us the history of time, who showed us a glimpse into black holes, who cast our minds and imaginations into the vast universe. But another great man also died this week. He was closer to home and significantly more down to earth. Hawking may have once said that: ‘The scientific account is complete. Theology is unnecessary.’ But it was Jim Bowen who uttered the line: ‘Keep out of the black and in the red, nothing in this game for two in a bed.’ Jim Bowen was a hit in the 80's with Bullseye Credit: ITV/REX/Shutterstock And if you missed it one week, he repeated the next week and then next for 14 years throughout the 1980s and early 90s. Bowen was the host of Bullseye, a particularly British institution - a darts-based game show hosted by a man who had none of the slick professionalism of someone like Bob Monkhouse. While Monkhouse had glamorous girls as his sidekicks, Jim Bowen had Tony Green; a chubby ex-darts player, turned commentator and scorekeeper. The contestants were largely Northern working class tradesman. The audience was the same, but not entirely. For there was also me and plenty of my school friends at Eton who were Bullseye addicts. And not just in some ironic way. I LOVED Bullseye. As did my school pal (the actor) Dominic West. We once wrote to Central Television asking if we could be contestants. They wrote back declining but offering us places in the studio audience. We didn't take up the offer, but I still sometimes imagine what that show might have been like if we'd managed to appear on it. I can't recall whether it was I or Dom answering the questions or throwing the darts (the knower or the thrower as it was called). Jim Bowen TV Presenter at home Credit: Trinity Mirror/Alamy Stock Photo At school on a Sunday evening at 5pm I’d rush back to my room to watch the show on the secret little black and white TV I had hidden in my 'boot box' beside my bed. At home I watched it - often with my sister Henrietta - religiously. An old friend of mine – James Tomkinson and I still talk about it over lunch. Joyously you can still catch it on Challenge. The shows have weathered well. The show's format was tweaked over the years but the mainstays were always there. There were the terrible jokes relating to people's jobs, always (with no subtlety) referenced on Jim's cue cards. 'So Mike I hear you're a drayman?' ‘That's right Jim'. 'So it would be fair to say your drink problem is behind you...' Actually on that occasion he had to explain that a drayman drove booze to pubs. Often he had no response planned at all so just said, "That's fine…Smashing…We move on…' 'So Wendy, I hear you're a nurse.' 'That's right Jim.' 'Fine, we move on.' 'So Phil, what do you do for a living." ‘I've been unemployed for two years Jim.’ 'Smashing.’ ‘Happily married man Mike?’ ‘I’m divorced Jim.’ ‘So Trevor you’re a fork lift truck engineer?’ ‘That’s right Jim’. ’You must have had some ups and downs…’ ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Barnsley.’ ‘Oh, so this will be new for you, a bit of carpet and electricity.’ Bowen with a prize car on 'Bullseye' Credit: ITV / Rex Features/ITV / Rex Features Then there were the questions. 'What was TE Lawrence's first name?' he once asked. 'Tommy?" asked a bemused contestant, who wasn't far wrong in fact. My favourite question incident was the time Jim inadvertently read out the answer. 'What country produces the most coffee Brazil,' he called out. And there was Bully's prize board. How well I recall not just the terrible prizes, recycled the following week if no one won them, but the poetry that announced them: ‘In one: No more shirking you'll love working with this fabulous power toolkit. In two: Stay cool and upright with this fabulous refrigerator. In three. What goes up, must come down. It's a stylish umbrella.’ The 'Bullseye' Christmas Show 1988 Credit: ITV/REX/Shutterstock/ITV/REX/Shutterstock Of course the denouement was the final 101 or more required with just with six darts for the star prize, hiding behind Bully. There was all the bonkers chat by the oche. 'Take your time and listen to Tony,' Jim would say. And Tony would say, 'Settle in, take your time, best ‘o luck.' It was the only game show where losing contestants were told: 'Come and look at what you could have won.' Actually winning was sometimes worse. I won’t ever forget the couple who lived in a tower block in Leeds who won the speedboat. My brother George once gave me Jim's autobiography, 'From a Bundle of Rags', for Christmas. I learnt of his humble origins, his previous life as a deputy headmaster, the old train station he lived in in Cumbria. Having just finished a new biography of Charles I, I think I'll get out Jim’s and have another read. Jim Bowen seemed a kind and self-effacing man who once said of his hosting of Bullseye: ‘I think the early shows set the TV industry back 20 years.’ I was once managed to get my hands on a real Bendy Bully (given to all contestants along with a tankard for the boys or goblet for the ladies)...I feel a quadruple bill on Challenge coming on...sorry Emily: ‘Let me count out the money, it’ll take me two minutes…’ William Sitwell is the host of Biting Talk on Soho Radio

Bullseye was the must watch show when I was a boarder at Eton

Ok so the great Stephen Hawking has died; a man who told us the history of time, who showed us a glimpse into black holes, who cast our minds and imaginations into the vast universe. But another great man also died this week. He was closer to home and significantly more down to earth. Hawking may have once said that: ‘The scientific account is complete. Theology is unnecessary.’ But it was Jim Bowen who uttered the line: ‘Keep out of the black and in the red, nothing in this game for two in a bed.’ Jim Bowen was a hit in the 80's with Bullseye Credit: ITV/REX/Shutterstock And if you missed it one week, he repeated the next week and then next for 14 years throughout the 1980s and early 90s. Bowen was the host of Bullseye, a particularly British institution - a darts-based game show hosted by a man who had none of the slick professionalism of someone like Bob Monkhouse. While Monkhouse had glamorous girls as his sidekicks, Jim Bowen had Tony Green; a chubby ex-darts player, turned commentator and scorekeeper. The contestants were largely Northern working class tradesman. The audience was the same, but not entirely. For there was also me and plenty of my school friends at Eton who were Bullseye addicts. And not just in some ironic way. I LOVED Bullseye. As did my school pal (the actor) Dominic West. We once wrote to Central Television asking if we could be contestants. They wrote back declining but offering us places in the studio audience. We didn't take up the offer, but I still sometimes imagine what that show might have been like if we'd managed to appear on it. I can't recall whether it was I or Dom answering the questions or throwing the darts (the knower or the thrower as it was called). Jim Bowen TV Presenter at home Credit: Trinity Mirror/Alamy Stock Photo At school on a Sunday evening at 5pm I’d rush back to my room to watch the show on the secret little black and white TV I had hidden in my 'boot box' beside my bed. At home I watched it - often with my sister Henrietta - religiously. An old friend of mine – James Tomkinson and I still talk about it over lunch. Joyously you can still catch it on Challenge. The shows have weathered well. The show's format was tweaked over the years but the mainstays were always there. There were the terrible jokes relating to people's jobs, always (with no subtlety) referenced on Jim's cue cards. 'So Mike I hear you're a drayman?' ‘That's right Jim'. 'So it would be fair to say your drink problem is behind you...' Actually on that occasion he had to explain that a drayman drove booze to pubs. Often he had no response planned at all so just said, "That's fine…Smashing…We move on…' 'So Wendy, I hear you're a nurse.' 'That's right Jim.' 'Fine, we move on.' 'So Phil, what do you do for a living." ‘I've been unemployed for two years Jim.’ 'Smashing.’ ‘Happily married man Mike?’ ‘I’m divorced Jim.’ ‘So Trevor you’re a fork lift truck engineer?’ ‘That’s right Jim’. ’You must have had some ups and downs…’ ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Barnsley.’ ‘Oh, so this will be new for you, a bit of carpet and electricity.’ Bowen with a prize car on 'Bullseye' Credit: ITV / Rex Features/ITV / Rex Features Then there were the questions. 'What was TE Lawrence's first name?' he once asked. 'Tommy?" asked a bemused contestant, who wasn't far wrong in fact. My favourite question incident was the time Jim inadvertently read out the answer. 'What country produces the most coffee Brazil,' he called out. And there was Bully's prize board. How well I recall not just the terrible prizes, recycled the following week if no one won them, but the poetry that announced them: ‘In one: No more shirking you'll love working with this fabulous power toolkit. In two: Stay cool and upright with this fabulous refrigerator. In three. What goes up, must come down. It's a stylish umbrella.’ The 'Bullseye' Christmas Show 1988 Credit: ITV/REX/Shutterstock/ITV/REX/Shutterstock Of course the denouement was the final 101 or more required with just with six darts for the star prize, hiding behind Bully. There was all the bonkers chat by the oche. 'Take your time and listen to Tony,' Jim would say. And Tony would say, 'Settle in, take your time, best ‘o luck.' It was the only game show where losing contestants were told: 'Come and look at what you could have won.' Actually winning was sometimes worse. I won’t ever forget the couple who lived in a tower block in Leeds who won the speedboat. My brother George once gave me Jim's autobiography, 'From a Bundle of Rags', for Christmas. I learnt of his humble origins, his previous life as a deputy headmaster, the old train station he lived in in Cumbria. Having just finished a new biography of Charles I, I think I'll get out Jim’s and have another read. Jim Bowen seemed a kind and self-effacing man who once said of his hosting of Bullseye: ‘I think the early shows set the TV industry back 20 years.’ I was once managed to get my hands on a real Bendy Bully (given to all contestants along with a tankard for the boys or goblet for the ladies)...I feel a quadruple bill on Challenge coming on...sorry Emily: ‘Let me count out the money, it’ll take me two minutes…’ William Sitwell is the host of Biting Talk on Soho Radio

Bullseye was the must watch show when I was a boarder at Eton

Ok so the great Stephen Hawking has died; a man who told us the history of time, who showed us a glimpse into black holes, who cast our minds and imaginations into the vast universe. But another great man also died this week. He was closer to home and significantly more down to earth. Hawking may have once said that: ‘The scientific account is complete. Theology is unnecessary.’ But it was Jim Bowen who uttered the line: ‘Keep out of the black and in the red, nothing in this game for two in a bed.’ Jim Bowen was a hit in the 80's with Bullseye Credit: ITV/REX/Shutterstock And if you missed it one week, he repeated the next week and then next for 14 years throughout the 1980s and early 90s. Bowen was the host of Bullseye, a particularly British institution - a darts-based game show hosted by a man who had none of the slick professionalism of someone like Bob Monkhouse. While Monkhouse had glamorous girls as his sidekicks, Jim Bowen had Tony Green; a chubby ex-darts player, turned commentator and scorekeeper. The contestants were largely Northern working class tradesman. The audience was the same, but not entirely. For there was also me and plenty of my school friends at Eton who were Bullseye addicts. And not just in some ironic way. I LOVED Bullseye. As did my school pal (the actor) Dominic West. We once wrote to Central Television asking if we could be contestants. They wrote back declining but offering us places in the studio audience. We didn't take up the offer, but I still sometimes imagine what that show might have been like if we'd managed to appear on it. I can't recall whether it was I or Dom answering the questions or throwing the darts (the knower or the thrower as it was called). Jim Bowen TV Presenter at home Credit: Trinity Mirror/Alamy Stock Photo At school on a Sunday evening at 5pm I’d rush back to my room to watch the show on the secret little black and white TV I had hidden in my 'boot box' beside my bed. At home I watched it - often with my sister Henrietta - religiously. An old friend of mine – James Tomkinson and I still talk about it over lunch. Joyously you can still catch it on Challenge. The shows have weathered well. The show's format was tweaked over the years but the mainstays were always there. There were the terrible jokes relating to people's jobs, always (with no subtlety) referenced on Jim's cue cards. 'So Mike I hear you're a drayman?' ‘That's right Jim'. 'So it would be fair to say your drink problem is behind you...' Actually on that occasion he had to explain that a drayman drove booze to pubs. Often he had no response planned at all so just said, "That's fine…Smashing…We move on…' 'So Wendy, I hear you're a nurse.' 'That's right Jim.' 'Fine, we move on.' 'So Phil, what do you do for a living." ‘I've been unemployed for two years Jim.’ 'Smashing.’ ‘Happily married man Mike?’ ‘I’m divorced Jim.’ ‘So Trevor you’re a fork lift truck engineer?’ ‘That’s right Jim’. ’You must have had some ups and downs…’ ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Barnsley.’ ‘Oh, so this will be new for you, a bit of carpet and electricity.’ Bowen with a prize car on 'Bullseye' Credit: ITV / Rex Features/ITV / Rex Features Then there were the questions. 'What was TE Lawrence's first name?' he once asked. 'Tommy?" asked a bemused contestant, who wasn't far wrong in fact. My favourite question incident was the time Jim inadvertently read out the answer. 'What country produces the most coffee Brazil,' he called out. And there was Bully's prize board. How well I recall not just the terrible prizes, recycled the following week if no one won them, but the poetry that announced them: ‘In one: No more shirking you'll love working with this fabulous power toolkit. In two: Stay cool and upright with this fabulous refrigerator. In three. What goes up, must come down. It's a stylish umbrella.’ The 'Bullseye' Christmas Show 1988 Credit: ITV/REX/Shutterstock/ITV/REX/Shutterstock Of course the denouement was the final 101 or more required with just with six darts for the star prize, hiding behind Bully. There was all the bonkers chat by the oche. 'Take your time and listen to Tony,' Jim would say. And Tony would say, 'Settle in, take your time, best ‘o luck.' It was the only game show where losing contestants were told: 'Come and look at what you could have won.' Actually winning was sometimes worse. I won’t ever forget the couple who lived in a tower block in Leeds who won the speedboat. My brother George once gave me Jim's autobiography, 'From a Bundle of Rags', for Christmas. I learnt of his humble origins, his previous life as a deputy headmaster, the old train station he lived in in Cumbria. Having just finished a new biography of Charles I, I think I'll get out Jim’s and have another read. Jim Bowen seemed a kind and self-effacing man who once said of his hosting of Bullseye: ‘I think the early shows set the TV industry back 20 years.’ I was once managed to get my hands on a real Bendy Bully (given to all contestants along with a tankard for the boys or goblet for the ladies)...I feel a quadruple bill on Challenge coming on...sorry Emily: ‘Let me count out the money, it’ll take me two minutes…’ William Sitwell is the host of Biting Talk on Soho Radio

Bullseye was the must watch show when I was a boarder at Eton

Ok so the great Stephen Hawking has died; a man who told us the history of time, who showed us a glimpse into black holes, who cast our minds and imaginations into the vast universe. But another great man also died this week. He was closer to home and significantly more down to earth. Hawking may have once said that: ‘The scientific account is complete. Theology is unnecessary.’ But it was Jim Bowen who uttered the line: ‘Keep out of the black and in the red, nothing in this game for two in a bed.’ Jim Bowen was a hit in the 80's with Bullseye Credit: ITV/REX/Shutterstock And if you missed it one week, he repeated the next week and then next for 14 years throughout the 1980s and early 90s. Bowen was the host of Bullseye, a particularly British institution - a darts-based game show hosted by a man who had none of the slick professionalism of someone like Bob Monkhouse. While Monkhouse had glamorous girls as his sidekicks, Jim Bowen had Tony Green; a chubby ex-darts player, turned commentator and scorekeeper. The contestants were largely Northern working class tradesman. The audience was the same, but not entirely. For there was also me and plenty of my school friends at Eton who were Bullseye addicts. And not just in some ironic way. I LOVED Bullseye. As did my school pal (the actor) Dominic West. We once wrote to Central Television asking if we could be contestants. They wrote back declining but offering us places in the studio audience. We didn't take up the offer, but I still sometimes imagine what that show might have been like if we'd managed to appear on it. I can't recall whether it was I or Dom answering the questions or throwing the darts (the knower or the thrower as it was called). Jim Bowen TV Presenter at home Credit: Trinity Mirror/Alamy Stock Photo At school on a Sunday evening at 5pm I’d rush back to my room to watch the show on the secret little black and white TV I had hidden in my 'boot box' beside my bed. At home I watched it - often with my sister Henrietta - religiously. An old friend of mine – James Tomkinson and I still talk about it over lunch. Joyously you can still catch it on Challenge. The shows have weathered well. The show's format was tweaked over the years but the mainstays were always there. There were the terrible jokes relating to people's jobs, always (with no subtlety) referenced on Jim's cue cards. 'So Mike I hear you're a drayman?' ‘That's right Jim'. 'So it would be fair to say your drink problem is behind you...' Actually on that occasion he had to explain that a drayman drove booze to pubs. Often he had no response planned at all so just said, "That's fine…Smashing…We move on…' 'So Wendy, I hear you're a nurse.' 'That's right Jim.' 'Fine, we move on.' 'So Phil, what do you do for a living." ‘I've been unemployed for two years Jim.’ 'Smashing.’ ‘Happily married man Mike?’ ‘I’m divorced Jim.’ ‘So Trevor you’re a fork lift truck engineer?’ ‘That’s right Jim’. ’You must have had some ups and downs…’ ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Barnsley.’ ‘Oh, so this will be new for you, a bit of carpet and electricity.’ Bowen with a prize car on 'Bullseye' Credit: ITV / Rex Features/ITV / Rex Features Then there were the questions. 'What was TE Lawrence's first name?' he once asked. 'Tommy?" asked a bemused contestant, who wasn't far wrong in fact. My favourite question incident was the time Jim inadvertently read out the answer. 'What country produces the most coffee Brazil,' he called out. And there was Bully's prize board. How well I recall not just the terrible prizes, recycled the following week if no one won them, but the poetry that announced them: ‘In one: No more shirking you'll love working with this fabulous power toolkit. In two: Stay cool and upright with this fabulous refrigerator. In three. What goes up, must come down. It's a stylish umbrella.’ The 'Bullseye' Christmas Show 1988 Credit: ITV/REX/Shutterstock/ITV/REX/Shutterstock Of course the denouement was the final 101 or more required with just with six darts for the star prize, hiding behind Bully. There was all the bonkers chat by the oche. 'Take your time and listen to Tony,' Jim would say. And Tony would say, 'Settle in, take your time, best ‘o luck.' It was the only game show where losing contestants were told: 'Come and look at what you could have won.' Actually winning was sometimes worse. I won’t ever forget the couple who lived in a tower block in Leeds who won the speedboat. My brother George once gave me Jim's autobiography, 'From a Bundle of Rags', for Christmas. I learnt of his humble origins, his previous life as a deputy headmaster, the old train station he lived in in Cumbria. Having just finished a new biography of Charles I, I think I'll get out Jim’s and have another read. Jim Bowen seemed a kind and self-effacing man who once said of his hosting of Bullseye: ‘I think the early shows set the TV industry back 20 years.’ I was once managed to get my hands on a real Bendy Bully (given to all contestants along with a tankard for the boys or goblet for the ladies)...I feel a quadruple bill on Challenge coming on...sorry Emily: ‘Let me count out the money, it’ll take me two minutes…’ William Sitwell is the host of Biting Talk on Soho Radio

Bullseye was the must watch show when I was a boarder at Eton

Ok so the great Stephen Hawking has died; a man who told us the history of time, who showed us a glimpse into black holes, who cast our minds and imaginations into the vast universe. But another great man also died this week. He was closer to home and significantly more down to earth. Hawking may have once said that: ‘The scientific account is complete. Theology is unnecessary.’ But it was Jim Bowen who uttered the line: ‘Keep out of the black and in the red, nothing in this game for two in a bed.’ Jim Bowen was a hit in the 80's with Bullseye Credit: ITV/REX/Shutterstock And if you missed it one week, he repeated the next week and then next for 14 years throughout the 1980s and early 90s. Bowen was the host of Bullseye, a particularly British institution - a darts-based game show hosted by a man who had none of the slick professionalism of someone like Bob Monkhouse. While Monkhouse had glamorous girls as his sidekicks, Jim Bowen had Tony Green; a chubby ex-darts player, turned commentator and scorekeeper. The contestants were largely Northern working class tradesman. The audience was the same, but not entirely. For there was also me and plenty of my school friends at Eton who were Bullseye addicts. And not just in some ironic way. I LOVED Bullseye. As did my school pal (the actor) Dominic West. We once wrote to Central Television asking if we could be contestants. They wrote back declining but offering us places in the studio audience. We didn't take up the offer, but I still sometimes imagine what that show might have been like if we'd managed to appear on it. I can't recall whether it was I or Dom answering the questions or throwing the darts (the knower or the thrower as it was called). Jim Bowen TV Presenter at home Credit: Trinity Mirror/Alamy Stock Photo At school on a Sunday evening at 5pm I’d rush back to my room to watch the show on the secret little black and white TV I had hidden in my 'boot box' beside my bed. At home I watched it - often with my sister Henrietta - religiously. An old friend of mine – James Tomkinson and I still talk about it over lunch. Joyously you can still catch it on Challenge. The shows have weathered well. The show's format was tweaked over the years but the mainstays were always there. There were the terrible jokes relating to people's jobs, always (with no subtlety) referenced on Jim's cue cards. 'So Mike I hear you're a drayman?' ‘That's right Jim'. 'So it would be fair to say your drink problem is behind you...' Actually on that occasion he had to explain that a drayman drove booze to pubs. Often he had no response planned at all so just said, "That's fine…Smashing…We move on…' 'So Wendy, I hear you're a nurse.' 'That's right Jim.' 'Fine, we move on.' 'So Phil, what do you do for a living." ‘I've been unemployed for two years Jim.’ 'Smashing.’ ‘Happily married man Mike?’ ‘I’m divorced Jim.’ ‘So Trevor you’re a fork lift truck engineer?’ ‘That’s right Jim’. ’You must have had some ups and downs…’ ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Barnsley.’ ‘Oh, so this will be new for you, a bit of carpet and electricity.’ Bowen with a prize car on 'Bullseye' Credit: ITV / Rex Features/ITV / Rex Features Then there were the questions. 'What was TE Lawrence's first name?' he once asked. 'Tommy?" asked a bemused contestant, who wasn't far wrong in fact. My favourite question incident was the time Jim inadvertently read out the answer. 'What country produces the most coffee Brazil,' he called out. And there was Bully's prize board. How well I recall not just the terrible prizes, recycled the following week if no one won them, but the poetry that announced them: ‘In one: No more shirking you'll love working with this fabulous power toolkit. In two: Stay cool and upright with this fabulous refrigerator. In three. What goes up, must come down. It's a stylish umbrella.’ The 'Bullseye' Christmas Show 1988 Credit: ITV/REX/Shutterstock/ITV/REX/Shutterstock Of course the denouement was the final 101 or more required with just with six darts for the star prize, hiding behind Bully. There was all the bonkers chat by the oche. 'Take your time and listen to Tony,' Jim would say. And Tony would say, 'Settle in, take your time, best ‘o luck.' It was the only game show where losing contestants were told: 'Come and look at what you could have won.' Actually winning was sometimes worse. I won’t ever forget the couple who lived in a tower block in Leeds who won the speedboat. My brother George once gave me Jim's autobiography, 'From a Bundle of Rags', for Christmas. I learnt of his humble origins, his previous life as a deputy headmaster, the old train station he lived in in Cumbria. Having just finished a new biography of Charles I, I think I'll get out Jim’s and have another read. Jim Bowen seemed a kind and self-effacing man who once said of his hosting of Bullseye: ‘I think the early shows set the TV industry back 20 years.’ I was once managed to get my hands on a real Bendy Bully (given to all contestants along with a tankard for the boys or goblet for the ladies)...I feel a quadruple bill on Challenge coming on...sorry Emily: ‘Let me count out the money, it’ll take me two minutes…’ William Sitwell is the host of Biting Talk on Soho Radio

Scott McTominay praised by Alex McLeish after being named in Scotland squad

It would stretch acceptable hyperbole to say that Alex McLeish looked into Scott McTominay’s eyes, saw Saltire blue and decided to build a Scotland team around him. What is true, however, is that McLeish drove through the recent Siberian weather so that he could judge for himself whether or not the highly regarded Manchester United midfielder genuinely wanted to pledge fealty to the land of his father’s birth. McLeish was sufficiently persuaded to include the 21-year-old – who turned down a request from Gareth Southgate to declare for England - in the squad for the Scots’ forthcoming friendlies, at home to Costa Rica and away to Hungary in Budapest. The 27-strong pool includes five other players new to this level – Oli McBurnie (Swansea), Dylan McGeouch (Hibernian), Barry Douglas (Wolves), Scott McKenna (Aberdeen) and the Heart of Midlothian goalkeeper, Jon McLaughlin. Asked if, at the start of his second stint as Scotland manager, he regarded McTominay as his first success, McLeish said: “Yeah I felt very chuffed with myself with that one. I did a lot of travelling that night to get to Manchester - it was a wicked night, with all the snow. I was actually very surprised by my first exchange with him because he said ‘I want to play for Scotland’. “I said, ‘Listen I’m not forcing it down your throat’ and he said that Jose Mourinho wanted to release it at a certain time after the Crystal Palace game. Scott intimated that he definitely wanted to play for Scotland. I said I’d phone him again next week when he could give me a definitive answer. “The fans have been giving him some banter saying he chose us because he wants to have his holidays every summer, but he played a great game at the weekend. I was at the Palace game and, unfortunately, he came off at half time because United’s midfield was a wee bit indisciplined. McTominay is a man on a mission Credit: PA “I must stress that he wasn’t. He had to make way for a couple of other players, but he came back with a giant bounce against Liverpool. “I think he’s ready and I think he’s got the temperament and mentality. I believe he has the confidence and there is so much Jose can impart to Scott McTominay. Now I believe we can help him to progress also by giving him additional advice. “He’s not got all the answers. He’s 21. He’s a young guy learning the game and we have to be patient with young guys, but my first game for Scotland was at 21 and I realised right away that I had to retain possession. I knew if you lose the ball in international football you might not get another game. “One mistake and you retire with one cap saying, “I’m happy, I got a cap!’, so it’s up to these guys to bring their club level but also to improve when they get here both mentally and technically.” Along with the six players who have not previously been named in Scotland squads, McLeish included three who have been with previous groups but who have not been capped - Fulham’s Kevin McDonald, Jamie Murphy, on loan to Rangers from Brighton, and the Millwall goalkeeper Jordan Archer. Several names familiar from recent campaigns were absent from the squad, some through injury but others were omitted because McLeish wanted to make a significant start on blooding the next generation of Scotland players. The manager, though, took pains to speak to previous regulars, like Robert Snodgrass and James McArthur. “I paid respect to the older fellows,” he said. “They’re not old guys – they’re experienced players and we’re going to need experience. I spoke to all the fellows who have been involved recently and said, ‘I know what you can do - you’re very much in my thoughts but I’m going to look at some other players at this particular international period’. “You need the nous and the experience of what those guys can do.” Aside from adding McTominay’s potential to Scotland’s strength, McLeish has inherited two highly rated defenders in Andrew Robertson of Liverpool and Celtic’s Kieran Tierney. The twist is that both play at left back but, although Tierney has featured on the other flank, he has also proved adept as a central defender for Celtic and also for the Scots when they played an autumn friendly against the Dutch in Aberdeen. “It is not in my plans to go forward with Tierney as the right back for Scotland,” McLeish said. “I don’t want to talk about systems, but you could see the way Tierney and Robertson fitted in at Pittodrie. “That is a good option for us. You want to get your best players in the team and those are two of the best players that the country has produced.” The Tartan Army are also likely to be introduced to McBurnie, although McLeish has yet to watch him play in person. “We have not seen much of Oli McBurnie. He has come late in the day,” McLeish said. “I have seen the last three or four Barnsley videos and he looks as if he has got a character about him. He is a guy who wants to play for Scotland and who has the mentality to play for us. He is unfazed by any opponent he comes across.” Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that, following this month’s fixtures and the June visit to Peru and Mexico, Scotland will meet Belgium in a friendly at Hampden Park on Friday, September 7. McLeish said: “As a side currently ranked in the top five in the world, Belgium are the standard to which our players should be aspiring.”

Scott McTominay praised by Alex McLeish after being named in Scotland squad

It would stretch acceptable hyperbole to say that Alex McLeish looked into Scott McTominay’s eyes, saw Saltire blue and decided to build a Scotland team around him. What is true, however, is that McLeish drove through the recent Siberian weather so that he could judge for himself whether or not the highly regarded Manchester United midfielder genuinely wanted to pledge fealty to the land of his father’s birth. McLeish was sufficiently persuaded to include the 21-year-old – who turned down a request from Gareth Southgate to declare for England - in the squad for the Scots’ forthcoming friendlies, at home to Costa Rica and away to Hungary in Budapest. The 27-strong pool includes five other players new to this level – Oli McBurnie (Swansea), Dylan McGeouch (Hibernian), Barry Douglas (Wolves), Scott McKenna (Aberdeen) and the Heart of Midlothian goalkeeper, Jon McLaughlin. Asked if, at the start of his second stint as Scotland manager, he regarded McTominay as his first success, McLeish said: “Yeah I felt very chuffed with myself with that one. I did a lot of travelling that night to get to Manchester - it was a wicked night, with all the snow. I was actually very surprised by my first exchange with him because he said ‘I want to play for Scotland’. “I said, ‘Listen I’m not forcing it down your throat’ and he said that Jose Mourinho wanted to release it at a certain time after the Crystal Palace game. Scott intimated that he definitely wanted to play for Scotland. I said I’d phone him again next week when he could give me a definitive answer. “The fans have been giving him some banter saying he chose us because he wants to have his holidays every summer, but he played a great game at the weekend. I was at the Palace game and, unfortunately, he came off at half time because United’s midfield was a wee bit indisciplined. McTominay is a man on a mission Credit: PA “I must stress that he wasn’t. He had to make way for a couple of other players, but he came back with a giant bounce against Liverpool. “I think he’s ready and I think he’s got the temperament and mentality. I believe he has the confidence and there is so much Jose can impart to Scott McTominay. Now I believe we can help him to progress also by giving him additional advice. “He’s not got all the answers. He’s 21. He’s a young guy learning the game and we have to be patient with young guys, but my first game for Scotland was at 21 and I realised right away that I had to retain possession. I knew if you lose the ball in international football you might not get another game. “One mistake and you retire with one cap saying, “I’m happy, I got a cap!’, so it’s up to these guys to bring their club level but also to improve when they get here both mentally and technically.” Along with the six players who have not previously been named in Scotland squads, McLeish included three who have been with previous groups but who have not been capped - Fulham’s Kevin McDonald, Jamie Murphy, on loan to Rangers from Brighton, and the Millwall goalkeeper Jordan Archer. Several names familiar from recent campaigns were absent from the squad, some through injury but others were omitted because McLeish wanted to make a significant start on blooding the next generation of Scotland players. The manager, though, took pains to speak to previous regulars, like Robert Snodgrass and James McArthur. “I paid respect to the older fellows,” he said. “They’re not old guys – they’re experienced players and we’re going to need experience. I spoke to all the fellows who have been involved recently and said, ‘I know what you can do - you’re very much in my thoughts but I’m going to look at some other players at this particular international period’. “You need the nous and the experience of what those guys can do.” Aside from adding McTominay’s potential to Scotland’s strength, McLeish has inherited two highly rated defenders in Andrew Robertson of Liverpool and Celtic’s Kieran Tierney. The twist is that both play at left back but, although Tierney has featured on the other flank, he has also proved adept as a central defender for Celtic and also for the Scots when they played an autumn friendly against the Dutch in Aberdeen. “It is not in my plans to go forward with Tierney as the right back for Scotland,” McLeish said. “I don’t want to talk about systems, but you could see the way Tierney and Robertson fitted in at Pittodrie. “That is a good option for us. You want to get your best players in the team and those are two of the best players that the country has produced.” The Tartan Army are also likely to be introduced to McBurnie, although McLeish has yet to watch him play in person. “We have not seen much of Oli McBurnie. He has come late in the day,” McLeish said. “I have seen the last three or four Barnsley videos and he looks as if he has got a character about him. He is a guy who wants to play for Scotland and who has the mentality to play for us. He is unfazed by any opponent he comes across.” Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that, following this month’s fixtures and the June visit to Peru and Mexico, Scotland will meet Belgium in a friendly at Hampden Park on Friday, September 7. McLeish said: “As a side currently ranked in the top five in the world, Belgium are the standard to which our players should be aspiring.”

Hull and Barnsley shared a 1-1 draw, while similarly relegation-threatened Reading lost 3-1 as Sheffield United went back into the top six.

The best country house hotels in Britain

The British country house hotel was born in 1949, brought to us in the pink and frilly shape of Sharrow Bay, overlooking Ullswater in the Lake District. Presided over by a splendid couple, Francis Coulson and his partner Brian Sack, it came complete with a gargantuan afternoon tea, and Sack’s famous Icky Sticky Toffee Pudding and Coulson’s bedtime poems on the pillow. People adored it. There had been leisure hotels in Britain before, of course, but this was the first where you could be assured of being personally pampered in beautiful rural surroundings, with a committed owner at the helm offering a warm welcome, decent food, peace and quiet. Hundreds of characterful country house hotels have followed, and today there’s a bewildering amount from which to choose. Here we present the cream of the crop. While some continue to offer no more than the pleasures of a beautiful old house, a roaring fire and a cup of tea, others cater to our increased demands: for spas, cookery courses and activities such as foraging. All these hotels share in common comfort, excellent food and the joys of the English countryside. England Lime WoodNew Forest, Hampshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating It’s the attention to detail throughout Lime Wood that makes it special. The oak doors are thick and stylised sitting rooms melt one into the other, pale lemon into lilac into mint green, each with an open fire. As for the food, that most grounded of all celebrity chefs, Angela Hartnett, has joined forces with existing Lime Wood chef Luke Holder and to produce Italian inspired dishes that are as informal, yet polished as their surroundings. Read expert review From £245per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire • Find exclusive UK hotel and restaurant offers from Telegraph Travel Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'SaisonsOxfordshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The style is a happy marriage between stately Oxfordshire and eccentric French fancy. The honey-coloured Manor house creates an attractive focus around which an eclectic mix of 15th-century ponds, Provençal lavender rows, a Japanese garden, kitsch sculptures and a wild mushroom patch can all co-exist. Seasonality is king in its two-Michelin starred restaurant. A 1930s-style bar serves comforting cocktails and the wine cellar stocks a French dominated list of more than 1,000 different wines. Read expert review From £756per night • The best country house hotels in Britain Lympstone ManorExmouth, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Britain's most exciting new country house hotel in decades, with double-Michelin-starred BBC Great British Menu icon Michael Caines MBE at the helm. The man himself takes the time to greet guests and can often be spied striding through the halls in his white chef overalls. Don't miss the eight-course tasting menu dinner. Many chefs get bogged down in zany experiments with foams and moleculars. Michael prefers to bravely poke at the booby-trapped boundary between sumptuous and sickly. Book a room with an outdoor bath overlooking the golden syrup sunsets of the Exe estuary. Read expert review From £290per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com The best hotels in Oxfordshire Save up to 70% on hotel deals via our partner Secret Escapes ClivedenTaplow, Berkshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating This has to be one of the loveliest spots for a hotel, overlooking a spectacular 19th-century parterre and surrounded by acres of ancient woodland running down to the Thames. Contrary to its appearance, Cliveden is not in the least bit stuck up and doesn’t mind whether you turn up in a Ferrari or a Fiat. The house has witnessed much intrigue over the years – it was the setting for the infamous Profumo affair – and a hint of naughtiness remains. Read expert review From £340per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Berkshire Chewton Glen HotelNew Forest, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel has lovely grounds and guests can follow the stream through the woods to emerge at Naish Beach, with a view of the Needles rising from the sea. Facilities are legion: a lavish spa, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis centre, nine-hole golf course and many activities, from archery and buggy riding to duck herding. Bedrooms and suites, in many different styles, display astonishing attention to detail, down to the stamped postcards on each desk. Read expert review From £315per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire Hambleton HallRutland, East Midlands, England 9Telegraph expert rating Beautifully decorated by Stefa Hart, who with her husband Tim has owned and run Hambleton Hall since 1979, the house exudes a feeling of controlled and carefully orchestrated wellbeing without ever feeling unnatural or overly theatrical. The flowing country house good looks are matched by the surrounding gardens and the beautiful view of Rutland Water from the lovely flower filled terrace. The cooking of Aaron Patterson, who began here as a 16-year-old sous chef, easily deserves its long held Michelin star and is rooted in local and seasonal produce, charmingly presented and always delicious. Read expert review From £265per night • The best hotels in Rutland Gidleigh ParkChagford, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Perched atop a bank overlooking private woodlands traced by a boulder-strewn river, Gidleigh’s location is wild and dramatic. The décor is stylish if a little straight-laced, with everything you’d expect in an English country house hotel: antique furniture, wood panelling, stone fireplaces and elegant bouquets of flowers. The 24 bedrooms are decorated individually in a classic English country style, with supersized beds, roll-top baths, televisions, L’Occitane toiletries, spring water from the Gidleigh Estate, bowls of fresh fruit and complimentary decanters of Madeira. Read expert review From £248per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon Askham HallPenrith, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating A mixture of family furniture and paintings have been combined with more modern, or quirky pieces to create something both charming and unusual. The whole place feels part stately home, part private club, but mostly unique. Richard Swale is a gifted chef who draws his influences from, amongst others, Magnus Nilsson of Faviken restaurant in Sweden and Shaun Hill of the Walnut Tree, in Wales. Richard’s food is locally grown, or personally preserved and tastes correspondingly fresh and interesting. Read expert review From £150per night • The best hotels in Cumbria Calcot ManorTetbury, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating A weathered stone manor house and farm building that’s grown to house 35 guest rooms, a gorgeous spa, a function centre in a converted barn, an Ofsted-registered crèche in the kids’ Playzone and two restaurants. Double rooms are in the manor; family rooms overlook the outdoor pool. There’s something incredibly relaxing about this hotel, with 'country modern’ bedrooms that manage to be both cosy and elegant, soothing and spoiling, natural and sophisticated. When it was time to go home, we refused to leave, cancelled everything and booked for another night. It’s honestly that good. Read expert review From £204per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Augill CastleKirkby Stephen, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating Augill Castle stands in 20 acres of grounds in the beautiful upper Eden Valley, within striking distance of both the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. The owners have created a highly individual hotel with minimal rules, a great sense of relaxation and welcome to all – unusual and imaginative with a 'family friends’ feel. The 15 bedrooms are eclectic and slightly eccentric with a mix of antique and contemporary pieces and an array of unusual and pretty bedsteads. Dining is a social occasion. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Cumbria Summer Lodge Country House Hotel & SpaEvershot, Dorset, England 9Telegraph expert rating Decoration and style tends towards the feminine and the flouncy with fabric covered ceilings and padded fabric walls, pictures of dogs, plenty of cushions and so on but they add up, in general, to a feeling of spoiling indulgence and do not, mercifully, overwhelm. The drawing room, designed by the poet and author Thomas Hardy, is admirably classic in style, now painted a pretty blue, and the bedrooms are divinely pretty and comfortable. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Dorset Cowley ManorCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating One of the first of the new breed of contemporary country house hotels to put their spa, C-side, at the heart of their offering. The glass-fronted building is a beautiful piece of modern design, sunk into a hill to one side. The treatments in the four rooms use the hotel’s own Green & Spring products, employing local natural products. There are indoor and outdoor pools and a dedicated manicure and pedicure area, gym, steam room and sauna. Read expert review From £195per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gloucestershire Gilpin Hotel & Lake HouseLake Windermere, Lake District, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is a characterful Georgian house, built in 1901 and owned by three generations of the Cunliffe family. That’s not to say it’s a creaking relic — the décor is glamorous boutique meets country pile. Life at the Gilpin is all about kicking back — and that’s helped by the service, about which it’s hard to say anything negative. Everyone smiles, everyone says hello — yet it’s not overbearing. Fishing, shooting, horse riding, mountain biking, paintballing and treasure hunts can also be organised on-site. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Four Seasons Hotel HampshireWinchfield, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating Built in the 18th century as a manor house, the hotel is set amid 500 acres of green fields and paddocks full of grazing horses. Inside, it’s all slick and stylish, a blend of traditional and contemporary, as befits a metropolitan, cosmopolitan Four Seasons hotel set in English countryside. Bedrooms are sophisticated and elegant, traditional in style but with high-tech amenities and large marble bathrooms, and flexible sleeping options for families. The fine dining restaurant, Seasons, is very elegant, and there is a more casual bistro, a bar with open fire and library for afternoon tea. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire The Pig at CombeGittisham, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Sexy and fun as well as romantic. The 27 rooms are some of the most charming, traditional yet stylish (larders and minibars cleverly hidden inside antique cupboards; some televisions disguised as antique mirrors), comfortable, practical, quirky and soothing of any hotel bedrooms in the land. Head chef Dan Gavriilidis is responsible for the Devon version of the Pigs’ informal '25 Mile’ menu, featuring the produce of the kitchen gardens and poly tunnels and the best locally-sourced ingredients. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Mr & Mrs Smith • The best hotels in Devon Barnsley HouseCirencester, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating What a beauty. With its golden stone, gables and mullion windows this is a dreamily romantic house. But for all that, the building is magnificently upstaged by its garden. There are four acres of formal gardens including a knot garden and a potager. Cream furnishings in the rooms enhance engaging artworks, all based on the theme of nature – a row of bird houses; a chandelier cleverly created out of flower pots. Everything about the restaurant has been calibrated to convey a sense of pleasing simplicity – although of course that requires much painstaking effort. Read expert review From £181per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Ellenborough ParkCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating A group of honeystone buildings is set around a historic Cotswold manor house that was embellished with castle-like towers in the mid-19th century. The 61 generously sized bedrooms are a world away from the shabby-chic looks or the pared back minimalism that are now the norm in other rural retreats. With stripy wallpaper and sprucely comfy armchairs, and with swathes of linen chintz in some rooms, panelling in others, the interiors are a contemporary take on traditional British country style. Read expert review From £126per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Lucknam ParkWiltshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The hotel sits within a 500-acre estate that encompasses meadows, paddocks and woodland. The main building is a beautiful, symmetrical, creeper-covered Palladian mansion dating from 1720. Its public rooms are opulent and elegant, with a traditional country house feel. They include a panelled library, a drawing room with a corniced ceiling, an ornate fireplace as well as tassled curtains and sofas, and The Park Restaurant, laid out with white-clothed tables under a sky-painted ceiling. Read expert review From £230per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wiltshire Lords Of The ManorUpper Slaughter, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating The oldest parts of this mellow-stone manor house date from around 1649, with gables, wings and bay windows added in later centuries. Traditional rather than style-conscious, the public rooms are furnished with antiques. The 26 rooms in total split into five categories, comfortably furnished with embroidered silk throws on beds and soft lighting. The Michelin-starred restaurant is a key reason for staying at this hotel. The £69 three-course dinner menu may include starters of squab pigeon or foie gras with smoked eel and mains of Gloucestershire Old Spot suckling pig with rhubarb or local venison. Read expert review From £150per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Hotel EndsleighTavistock, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Built in 1812 as the holiday home for the Duchess of Bedford, Georgiana Russell, this wildly romantic, chintz-free country estate, run by Channel 5’s Hotel Inspector, Alex Polizzi, is steeped in royal history. It’s a verdantly gardened, Grade 1-listed Eden between Dartmoor and Exmoor, with shell houses and hidden glades for romantic tête-à-têtes. The cream teas are worth the journey alone: a help-yourself affair of just-baked scones accompanied by massive urns of clotted cream and fruit-laden strawberry jam. Breakfasts, too, are a cut above the rivals. Read expert review From £198per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon The House at BeaverbrookSurrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Step into a bygone era of English high society, original artworks and antiques at this luxurious country house hotel, where press baron Lord Beaverbrook entertained world leaders and literary greats. Grandeur and opulence ooze from every room, beautifully designed by Susie Atkinson: A cosy morning room with log fire and plump, squishy sofas offers stunning views of the North Downs and Italianate garden. The library's shelves heave with weighty tomes, and the UK's first home cinema, where Beaverbrook and Sir Winston Churchill discussed the war's progress, still has the original wood-panelling and lighting. Read expert review From £225per night • The best hotels in Surrey Bovey CastleMoretonhampstead, Dartmoor, England 9Telegraph expert rating This grand stately pile on a sporting estate in Dartmoor National Park caters for every whim, whether rugged outdoor pursuits or fine dining and pampering. Inside, there’s a heated swimming pool and whirlpool with deckchairs overlooking the grounds, plus steam room, sauna and gym, while the ESPA Spa offers an extensive range of treatments. Outside, in the 275-acre grounds, there’s an 18-hole championship golf course, tennis courts, a croquet pitch, archery and rifle range, putting green, helipad and beautiful lakeside walks to be had. Read expert review From £112per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels on Dartmoor Great FostersEgham, Surrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Italian gilt furniture, exquisite Flemish tapestries, elaborate Jacobean fireplaces and a one-Michelin-starred restaurant are the crowning glories of this luxury country-house hotel – once a 16th-century royal hunting lodge used by both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Oak paneling, beautifully-carved Jacobean fire-pieces plus a secret staircase – even 17th-century graffiti – await guests who enter the Grade I-listed building via a low wicket door. Traces of royal ancestry are everywhere, in Elizabeth’s coat of arms above the porch, and on the ceiling, dating from the 1500s and decorated with Queen Anne Boleyn’s personal crests. Read expert review From £122per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Surrey Wales Palé HallLlandderfel, Gwynedd, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating Complete with spire, porte-cochère and a grand entrance hall, hand stencilled by the owners, this mansion feels regal and is astonishingly well preserved. The wealth of period features: stained-glass, tiles, wood panelling, chandeliers, fireplaces and so on, are complemented by Angela Harper’s decoration, making liberal use of antiques, Zoffany and Sanderson wallpapers, paintings (including Snowdonia artist Rob Reen’s striking canvases of sheep) and collections of glass. Read expert review From £199per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gwynedd Gliffaes Country House HotelBrecon Beacons, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating What’s not to love? Down a rural track, Gliffaes reclines peacefully in 33-acre grounds in the shadow of the Black Mountains and on the edge of the River Usk. With antique dressers, floral drapes, retro Roberts radios, and carpets you can sink your toes into, the look is traditionally elegant, never twee. Excellent restaurant. Read expert review From £110per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Bodysgallen Hall and SpaLlandudno, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The medieval core of a fine 16th-century mansion, the tower was built as a lookout for Conwy Castle. The higher you climb, the older its spiralling staircase becomes: Victorian at the bottom, 13th-century at the top. The encircling view is enthralling. As you turn, first Conwy Castle, then Snowdonia, then the sea and Anglesey, then Great Orme, catching the golden light, and lastly Llandudno, with the promise of its marvellous 19th-century promenade, come into view. Read expert review From £185per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The most romantic hotels in Wales Llangoed HallPowys, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating The house itself, redesigned by Clough Williams-Ellis in 1912, has great presence. Later bought and restored by Sir Bernard Ashley, widower of Laura, family photographs, as well as his fine collection of early 20th-century British paintings, including a collection of prints by James McNeil Whistler abound. Guests are encouraged to relax, curl up on sofas and play the piano. Read expert review From £99per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales The GroveNarberth, Pembrokeshire, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is set in 26 acres of grounds amid deep countryside, with distant views of the Preseli Hills. The main building is a handsome three-storey residence with Georgian proportions and distinctive Arts and Crafts panelling and fireplaces. The lounges – cosy yet elegant, with real fires, window seats, plush sofas and modern prints and paintings of coastal Pembrokeshire – set the tone of the whole property. There are 26 rooms in total. Expect treats such as the softest of sheets, posh toiletries, thick towels and house-made biscotti. Read expert review From £145per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Scotland The Gleneagles HotelAuchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating Built in the 1920s as a railway resort hotel, the design is Scottish Baronial meets French chateau, with all the opulent comfort of a grand country house on steroids. (A dull-looking modern addition to one side is easily ignored). It’s so big you need the map provided when you arrive, but this five-star formality comes with a splendid sense of ease: time seems to slow from the moment the kilted doorman welcomes you to the hotel. Read expert review From £265per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Scotland Inverlochy Castle HotelFort William, Highlands, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating No bows to passing fashions here. Moving with the times means waterfall showers, Bang & Olufsen stereos and televisions, while the unashamedly country house style - all swags, gilt, silk and brocade, sparkling crystal, polished wood and an all-pervading sense of time suspended, remains. Nowhere else makes grandeur so cosy, combining Jacobite rose wallpaper, Venetian chandeliers and French Empire-style ceiling frescos with perfectly judged élan. Dinner begins with a drink by the fire in the Great Hall, followed by a delightfully light-handed five-course menu with a distinctly Highland accent. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • Top 10: the best Scottish castle hotels Isle of Eriska HotelArgyll & Bute, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating Calm and solitude are assured in a haven of herons and badgers, where the loudest sound is likely to be a fishing boat puttering over tranquil water. The trappings of Victorian wealth and privilege pervade drawing rooms filled with deep sofas, fireplaces and books in the imposing granite and red sandstone Big House. Elegant and comfortable without being stuffy, the ambiance is warm and welcoming, with soft, bright furnishings and piles of wellingtons by the front door of the oak-panelled hall. Carry on, Jeeves. Read expert review From £330per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels for spa breaks in Scotland Killiecrankie HotelPerth and Kinross, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating With direct access to the beautiful Pass of Killiecrankie, the deep river gorge formed by the River Garry, the whitewashed 1840s house has been a hotel since 1939. There are 10 pretty and homely rooms, with antique pieces, thick curtains and very comfortable beds. No two are the same: they are all shapes and sizes and some of the bathrooms are very small. You’ll find a vase of fresh flowers and the Egyptian cotton sheets will be turned down while you are at dinner. Read expert review From £220per night • Scotland hotels: the best places to stay on Scottish lochs The Roxburghe Hotel And Golf CourseKelso, Scottish Borders, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating The drawing room at The Roxburghe feels like a private house, with its family portraits and photographs, books and ornaments, and its welcoming groups of sofas and armchairs. Elsewhere there are tartan carpets, collections of whiskey and gin, plentiful open fires and the homely smell of woodsmoke. Bedrooms, some of which were designed by the Duchess of Roxburghe, are all different and decorated in traditional country house style. Three rooms have open fires, with coal and logs provided - the greatest luxury in a country hotel bedroom. Read expert review From £171per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

The best country house hotels in Britain

The British country house hotel was born in 1949, brought to us in the pink and frilly shape of Sharrow Bay, overlooking Ullswater in the Lake District. Presided over by a splendid couple, Francis Coulson and his partner Brian Sack, it came complete with a gargantuan afternoon tea, and Sack’s famous Icky Sticky Toffee Pudding and Coulson’s bedtime poems on the pillow. People adored it. There had been leisure hotels in Britain before, of course, but this was the first where you could be assured of being personally pampered in beautiful rural surroundings, with a committed owner at the helm offering a warm welcome, decent food, peace and quiet. Hundreds of characterful country house hotels have followed, and today there’s a bewildering amount from which to choose. Here we present the cream of the crop. While some continue to offer no more than the pleasures of a beautiful old house, a roaring fire and a cup of tea, others cater to our increased demands: for spas, cookery courses and activities such as foraging. All these hotels share in common comfort, excellent food and the joys of the English countryside. England Lime WoodNew Forest, Hampshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating It’s the attention to detail throughout Lime Wood that makes it special. The oak doors are thick and stylised sitting rooms melt one into the other, pale lemon into lilac into mint green, each with an open fire. As for the food, that most grounded of all celebrity chefs, Angela Hartnett, has joined forces with existing Lime Wood chef Luke Holder and to produce Italian inspired dishes that are as informal, yet polished as their surroundings. Read expert review From £245per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire • Find exclusive UK hotel and restaurant offers from Telegraph Travel Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'SaisonsOxfordshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The style is a happy marriage between stately Oxfordshire and eccentric French fancy. The honey-coloured Manor house creates an attractive focus around which an eclectic mix of 15th-century ponds, Provençal lavender rows, a Japanese garden, kitsch sculptures and a wild mushroom patch can all co-exist. Seasonality is king in its two-Michelin starred restaurant. A 1930s-style bar serves comforting cocktails and the wine cellar stocks a French dominated list of more than 1,000 different wines. Read expert review From £756per night • The best country house hotels in Britain Lympstone ManorExmouth, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Britain's most exciting new country house hotel in decades, with double-Michelin-starred BBC Great British Menu icon Michael Caines MBE at the helm. The man himself takes the time to greet guests and can often be spied striding through the halls in his white chef overalls. Don't miss the eight-course tasting menu dinner. Many chefs get bogged down in zany experiments with foams and moleculars. Michael prefers to bravely poke at the booby-trapped boundary between sumptuous and sickly. Book a room with an outdoor bath overlooking the golden syrup sunsets of the Exe estuary. Read expert review From £290per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com The best hotels in Oxfordshire Save up to 70% on hotel deals via our partner Secret Escapes ClivedenTaplow, Berkshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating This has to be one of the loveliest spots for a hotel, overlooking a spectacular 19th-century parterre and surrounded by acres of ancient woodland running down to the Thames. Contrary to its appearance, Cliveden is not in the least bit stuck up and doesn’t mind whether you turn up in a Ferrari or a Fiat. The house has witnessed much intrigue over the years – it was the setting for the infamous Profumo affair – and a hint of naughtiness remains. Read expert review From £340per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Berkshire Chewton Glen HotelNew Forest, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel has lovely grounds and guests can follow the stream through the woods to emerge at Naish Beach, with a view of the Needles rising from the sea. Facilities are legion: a lavish spa, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis centre, nine-hole golf course and many activities, from archery and buggy riding to duck herding. Bedrooms and suites, in many different styles, display astonishing attention to detail, down to the stamped postcards on each desk. Read expert review From £315per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire Hambleton HallRutland, East Midlands, England 9Telegraph expert rating Beautifully decorated by Stefa Hart, who with her husband Tim has owned and run Hambleton Hall since 1979, the house exudes a feeling of controlled and carefully orchestrated wellbeing without ever feeling unnatural or overly theatrical. The flowing country house good looks are matched by the surrounding gardens and the beautiful view of Rutland Water from the lovely flower filled terrace. The cooking of Aaron Patterson, who began here as a 16-year-old sous chef, easily deserves its long held Michelin star and is rooted in local and seasonal produce, charmingly presented and always delicious. Read expert review From £265per night • The best hotels in Rutland Gidleigh ParkChagford, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Perched atop a bank overlooking private woodlands traced by a boulder-strewn river, Gidleigh’s location is wild and dramatic. The décor is stylish if a little straight-laced, with everything you’d expect in an English country house hotel: antique furniture, wood panelling, stone fireplaces and elegant bouquets of flowers. The 24 bedrooms are decorated individually in a classic English country style, with supersized beds, roll-top baths, televisions, L’Occitane toiletries, spring water from the Gidleigh Estate, bowls of fresh fruit and complimentary decanters of Madeira. Read expert review From £248per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon Askham HallPenrith, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating A mixture of family furniture and paintings have been combined with more modern, or quirky pieces to create something both charming and unusual. The whole place feels part stately home, part private club, but mostly unique. Richard Swale is a gifted chef who draws his influences from, amongst others, Magnus Nilsson of Faviken restaurant in Sweden and Shaun Hill of the Walnut Tree, in Wales. Richard’s food is locally grown, or personally preserved and tastes correspondingly fresh and interesting. Read expert review From £150per night • The best hotels in Cumbria Calcot ManorTetbury, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating A weathered stone manor house and farm building that’s grown to house 35 guest rooms, a gorgeous spa, a function centre in a converted barn, an Ofsted-registered crèche in the kids’ Playzone and two restaurants. Double rooms are in the manor; family rooms overlook the outdoor pool. There’s something incredibly relaxing about this hotel, with 'country modern’ bedrooms that manage to be both cosy and elegant, soothing and spoiling, natural and sophisticated. When it was time to go home, we refused to leave, cancelled everything and booked for another night. It’s honestly that good. Read expert review From £204per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Augill CastleKirkby Stephen, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating Augill Castle stands in 20 acres of grounds in the beautiful upper Eden Valley, within striking distance of both the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. The owners have created a highly individual hotel with minimal rules, a great sense of relaxation and welcome to all – unusual and imaginative with a 'family friends’ feel. The 15 bedrooms are eclectic and slightly eccentric with a mix of antique and contemporary pieces and an array of unusual and pretty bedsteads. Dining is a social occasion. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Cumbria Summer Lodge Country House Hotel & SpaEvershot, Dorset, England 9Telegraph expert rating Decoration and style tends towards the feminine and the flouncy with fabric covered ceilings and padded fabric walls, pictures of dogs, plenty of cushions and so on but they add up, in general, to a feeling of spoiling indulgence and do not, mercifully, overwhelm. The drawing room, designed by the poet and author Thomas Hardy, is admirably classic in style, now painted a pretty blue, and the bedrooms are divinely pretty and comfortable. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Dorset Cowley ManorCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating One of the first of the new breed of contemporary country house hotels to put their spa, C-side, at the heart of their offering. The glass-fronted building is a beautiful piece of modern design, sunk into a hill to one side. The treatments in the four rooms use the hotel’s own Green & Spring products, employing local natural products. There are indoor and outdoor pools and a dedicated manicure and pedicure area, gym, steam room and sauna. Read expert review From £195per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gloucestershire Gilpin Hotel & Lake HouseLake Windermere, Lake District, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is a characterful Georgian house, built in 1901 and owned by three generations of the Cunliffe family. That’s not to say it’s a creaking relic — the décor is glamorous boutique meets country pile. Life at the Gilpin is all about kicking back — and that’s helped by the service, about which it’s hard to say anything negative. Everyone smiles, everyone says hello — yet it’s not overbearing. Fishing, shooting, horse riding, mountain biking, paintballing and treasure hunts can also be organised on-site. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Four Seasons Hotel HampshireWinchfield, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating Built in the 18th century as a manor house, the hotel is set amid 500 acres of green fields and paddocks full of grazing horses. Inside, it’s all slick and stylish, a blend of traditional and contemporary, as befits a metropolitan, cosmopolitan Four Seasons hotel set in English countryside. Bedrooms are sophisticated and elegant, traditional in style but with high-tech amenities and large marble bathrooms, and flexible sleeping options for families. The fine dining restaurant, Seasons, is very elegant, and there is a more casual bistro, a bar with open fire and library for afternoon tea. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire The Pig at CombeGittisham, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Sexy and fun as well as romantic. The 27 rooms are some of the most charming, traditional yet stylish (larders and minibars cleverly hidden inside antique cupboards; some televisions disguised as antique mirrors), comfortable, practical, quirky and soothing of any hotel bedrooms in the land. Head chef Dan Gavriilidis is responsible for the Devon version of the Pigs’ informal '25 Mile’ menu, featuring the produce of the kitchen gardens and poly tunnels and the best locally-sourced ingredients. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Mr & Mrs Smith • The best hotels in Devon Barnsley HouseCirencester, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating What a beauty. With its golden stone, gables and mullion windows this is a dreamily romantic house. But for all that, the building is magnificently upstaged by its garden. There are four acres of formal gardens including a knot garden and a potager. Cream furnishings in the rooms enhance engaging artworks, all based on the theme of nature – a row of bird houses; a chandelier cleverly created out of flower pots. Everything about the restaurant has been calibrated to convey a sense of pleasing simplicity – although of course that requires much painstaking effort. Read expert review From £181per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Ellenborough ParkCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating A group of honeystone buildings is set around a historic Cotswold manor house that was embellished with castle-like towers in the mid-19th century. The 61 generously sized bedrooms are a world away from the shabby-chic looks or the pared back minimalism that are now the norm in other rural retreats. With stripy wallpaper and sprucely comfy armchairs, and with swathes of linen chintz in some rooms, panelling in others, the interiors are a contemporary take on traditional British country style. Read expert review From £126per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Lucknam ParkWiltshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The hotel sits within a 500-acre estate that encompasses meadows, paddocks and woodland. The main building is a beautiful, symmetrical, creeper-covered Palladian mansion dating from 1720. Its public rooms are opulent and elegant, with a traditional country house feel. They include a panelled library, a drawing room with a corniced ceiling, an ornate fireplace as well as tassled curtains and sofas, and The Park Restaurant, laid out with white-clothed tables under a sky-painted ceiling. Read expert review From £230per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wiltshire Lords Of The ManorUpper Slaughter, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating The oldest parts of this mellow-stone manor house date from around 1649, with gables, wings and bay windows added in later centuries. Traditional rather than style-conscious, the public rooms are furnished with antiques. The 26 rooms in total split into five categories, comfortably furnished with embroidered silk throws on beds and soft lighting. The Michelin-starred restaurant is a key reason for staying at this hotel. The £69 three-course dinner menu may include starters of squab pigeon or foie gras with smoked eel and mains of Gloucestershire Old Spot suckling pig with rhubarb or local venison. Read expert review From £150per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Hotel EndsleighTavistock, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Built in 1812 as the holiday home for the Duchess of Bedford, Georgiana Russell, this wildly romantic, chintz-free country estate, run by Channel 5’s Hotel Inspector, Alex Polizzi, is steeped in royal history. It’s a verdantly gardened, Grade 1-listed Eden between Dartmoor and Exmoor, with shell houses and hidden glades for romantic tête-à-têtes. The cream teas are worth the journey alone: a help-yourself affair of just-baked scones accompanied by massive urns of clotted cream and fruit-laden strawberry jam. Breakfasts, too, are a cut above the rivals. Read expert review From £198per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon The House at BeaverbrookSurrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Step into a bygone era of English high society, original artworks and antiques at this luxurious country house hotel, where press baron Lord Beaverbrook entertained world leaders and literary greats. Grandeur and opulence ooze from every room, beautifully designed by Susie Atkinson: A cosy morning room with log fire and plump, squishy sofas offers stunning views of the North Downs and Italianate garden. The library's shelves heave with weighty tomes, and the UK's first home cinema, where Beaverbrook and Sir Winston Churchill discussed the war's progress, still has the original wood-panelling and lighting. Read expert review From £225per night • The best hotels in Surrey Bovey CastleMoretonhampstead, Dartmoor, England 9Telegraph expert rating This grand stately pile on a sporting estate in Dartmoor National Park caters for every whim, whether rugged outdoor pursuits or fine dining and pampering. Inside, there’s a heated swimming pool and whirlpool with deckchairs overlooking the grounds, plus steam room, sauna and gym, while the ESPA Spa offers an extensive range of treatments. Outside, in the 275-acre grounds, there’s an 18-hole championship golf course, tennis courts, a croquet pitch, archery and rifle range, putting green, helipad and beautiful lakeside walks to be had. Read expert review From £112per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels on Dartmoor Great FostersEgham, Surrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Italian gilt furniture, exquisite Flemish tapestries, elaborate Jacobean fireplaces and a one-Michelin-starred restaurant are the crowning glories of this luxury country-house hotel – once a 16th-century royal hunting lodge used by both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Oak paneling, beautifully-carved Jacobean fire-pieces plus a secret staircase – even 17th-century graffiti – await guests who enter the Grade I-listed building via a low wicket door. Traces of royal ancestry are everywhere, in Elizabeth’s coat of arms above the porch, and on the ceiling, dating from the 1500s and decorated with Queen Anne Boleyn’s personal crests. Read expert review From £122per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Surrey Wales Palé HallLlandderfel, Gwynedd, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating Complete with spire, porte-cochère and a grand entrance hall, hand stencilled by the owners, this mansion feels regal and is astonishingly well preserved. The wealth of period features: stained-glass, tiles, wood panelling, chandeliers, fireplaces and so on, are complemented by Angela Harper’s decoration, making liberal use of antiques, Zoffany and Sanderson wallpapers, paintings (including Snowdonia artist Rob Reen’s striking canvases of sheep) and collections of glass. Read expert review From £199per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gwynedd Gliffaes Country House HotelBrecon Beacons, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating What’s not to love? Down a rural track, Gliffaes reclines peacefully in 33-acre grounds in the shadow of the Black Mountains and on the edge of the River Usk. With antique dressers, floral drapes, retro Roberts radios, and carpets you can sink your toes into, the look is traditionally elegant, never twee. Excellent restaurant. Read expert review From £110per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Bodysgallen Hall and SpaLlandudno, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The medieval core of a fine 16th-century mansion, the tower was built as a lookout for Conwy Castle. The higher you climb, the older its spiralling staircase becomes: Victorian at the bottom, 13th-century at the top. The encircling view is enthralling. As you turn, first Conwy Castle, then Snowdonia, then the sea and Anglesey, then Great Orme, catching the golden light, and lastly Llandudno, with the promise of its marvellous 19th-century promenade, come into view. Read expert review From £185per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The most romantic hotels in Wales Llangoed HallPowys, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating The house itself, redesigned by Clough Williams-Ellis in 1912, has great presence. Later bought and restored by Sir Bernard Ashley, widower of Laura, family photographs, as well as his fine collection of early 20th-century British paintings, including a collection of prints by James McNeil Whistler abound. Guests are encouraged to relax, curl up on sofas and play the piano. Read expert review From £99per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales The GroveNarberth, Pembrokeshire, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is set in 26 acres of grounds amid deep countryside, with distant views of the Preseli Hills. The main building is a handsome three-storey residence with Georgian proportions and distinctive Arts and Crafts panelling and fireplaces. The lounges – cosy yet elegant, with real fires, window seats, plush sofas and modern prints and paintings of coastal Pembrokeshire – set the tone of the whole property. There are 26 rooms in total. Expect treats such as the softest of sheets, posh toiletries, thick towels and house-made biscotti. Read expert review From £145per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Scotland The Gleneagles HotelAuchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating Built in the 1920s as a railway resort hotel, the design is Scottish Baronial meets French chateau, with all the opulent comfort of a grand country house on steroids. (A dull-looking modern addition to one side is easily ignored). It’s so big you need the map provided when you arrive, but this five-star formality comes with a splendid sense of ease: time seems to slow from the moment the kilted doorman welcomes you to the hotel. Read expert review From £265per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Scotland Inverlochy Castle HotelFort William, Highlands, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating No bows to passing fashions here. Moving with the times means waterfall showers, Bang & Olufsen stereos and televisions, while the unashamedly country house style - all swags, gilt, silk and brocade, sparkling crystal, polished wood and an all-pervading sense of time suspended, remains. Nowhere else makes grandeur so cosy, combining Jacobite rose wallpaper, Venetian chandeliers and French Empire-style ceiling frescos with perfectly judged élan. Dinner begins with a drink by the fire in the Great Hall, followed by a delightfully light-handed five-course menu with a distinctly Highland accent. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • Top 10: the best Scottish castle hotels Isle of Eriska HotelArgyll & Bute, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating Calm and solitude are assured in a haven of herons and badgers, where the loudest sound is likely to be a fishing boat puttering over tranquil water. The trappings of Victorian wealth and privilege pervade drawing rooms filled with deep sofas, fireplaces and books in the imposing granite and red sandstone Big House. Elegant and comfortable without being stuffy, the ambiance is warm and welcoming, with soft, bright furnishings and piles of wellingtons by the front door of the oak-panelled hall. Carry on, Jeeves. Read expert review From £330per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels for spa breaks in Scotland Killiecrankie HotelPerth and Kinross, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating With direct access to the beautiful Pass of Killiecrankie, the deep river gorge formed by the River Garry, the whitewashed 1840s house has been a hotel since 1939. There are 10 pretty and homely rooms, with antique pieces, thick curtains and very comfortable beds. No two are the same: they are all shapes and sizes and some of the bathrooms are very small. You’ll find a vase of fresh flowers and the Egyptian cotton sheets will be turned down while you are at dinner. Read expert review From £220per night • Scotland hotels: the best places to stay on Scottish lochs The Roxburghe Hotel And Golf CourseKelso, Scottish Borders, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating The drawing room at The Roxburghe feels like a private house, with its family portraits and photographs, books and ornaments, and its welcoming groups of sofas and armchairs. Elsewhere there are tartan carpets, collections of whiskey and gin, plentiful open fires and the homely smell of woodsmoke. Bedrooms, some of which were designed by the Duchess of Roxburghe, are all different and decorated in traditional country house style. Three rooms have open fires, with coal and logs provided - the greatest luxury in a country hotel bedroom. Read expert review From £171per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

The best country house hotels in Britain

The British country house hotel was born in 1949, brought to us in the pink and frilly shape of Sharrow Bay, overlooking Ullswater in the Lake District. Presided over by a splendid couple, Francis Coulson and his partner Brian Sack, it came complete with a gargantuan afternoon tea, and Sack’s famous Icky Sticky Toffee Pudding and Coulson’s bedtime poems on the pillow. People adored it. There had been leisure hotels in Britain before, of course, but this was the first where you could be assured of being personally pampered in beautiful rural surroundings, with a committed owner at the helm offering a warm welcome, decent food, peace and quiet. Hundreds of characterful country house hotels have followed, and today there’s a bewildering amount from which to choose. Here we present the cream of the crop. While some continue to offer no more than the pleasures of a beautiful old house, a roaring fire and a cup of tea, others cater to our increased demands: for spas, cookery courses and activities such as foraging. All these hotels share in common comfort, excellent food and the joys of the English countryside. England Lime WoodNew Forest, Hampshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating It’s the attention to detail throughout Lime Wood that makes it special. The oak doors are thick and stylised sitting rooms melt one into the other, pale lemon into lilac into mint green, each with an open fire. As for the food, that most grounded of all celebrity chefs, Angela Hartnett, has joined forces with existing Lime Wood chef Luke Holder and to produce Italian inspired dishes that are as informal, yet polished as their surroundings. Read expert review From £245per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire • Find exclusive UK hotel and restaurant offers from Telegraph Travel Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'SaisonsOxfordshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The style is a happy marriage between stately Oxfordshire and eccentric French fancy. The honey-coloured Manor house creates an attractive focus around which an eclectic mix of 15th-century ponds, Provençal lavender rows, a Japanese garden, kitsch sculptures and a wild mushroom patch can all co-exist. Seasonality is king in its two-Michelin starred restaurant. A 1930s-style bar serves comforting cocktails and the wine cellar stocks a French dominated list of more than 1,000 different wines. Read expert review From £756per night • The best country house hotels in Britain Lympstone ManorExmouth, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Britain's most exciting new country house hotel in decades, with double-Michelin-starred BBC Great British Menu icon Michael Caines MBE at the helm. The man himself takes the time to greet guests and can often be spied striding through the halls in his white chef overalls. Don't miss the eight-course tasting menu dinner. Many chefs get bogged down in zany experiments with foams and moleculars. Michael prefers to bravely poke at the booby-trapped boundary between sumptuous and sickly. Book a room with an outdoor bath overlooking the golden syrup sunsets of the Exe estuary. Read expert review From £290per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com The best hotels in Oxfordshire Save up to 70% on hotel deals via our partner Secret Escapes ClivedenTaplow, Berkshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating This has to be one of the loveliest spots for a hotel, overlooking a spectacular 19th-century parterre and surrounded by acres of ancient woodland running down to the Thames. Contrary to its appearance, Cliveden is not in the least bit stuck up and doesn’t mind whether you turn up in a Ferrari or a Fiat. The house has witnessed much intrigue over the years – it was the setting for the infamous Profumo affair – and a hint of naughtiness remains. Read expert review From £340per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Berkshire Chewton Glen HotelNew Forest, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel has lovely grounds and guests can follow the stream through the woods to emerge at Naish Beach, with a view of the Needles rising from the sea. Facilities are legion: a lavish spa, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis centre, nine-hole golf course and many activities, from archery and buggy riding to duck herding. Bedrooms and suites, in many different styles, display astonishing attention to detail, down to the stamped postcards on each desk. Read expert review From £315per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire Hambleton HallRutland, East Midlands, England 9Telegraph expert rating Beautifully decorated by Stefa Hart, who with her husband Tim has owned and run Hambleton Hall since 1979, the house exudes a feeling of controlled and carefully orchestrated wellbeing without ever feeling unnatural or overly theatrical. The flowing country house good looks are matched by the surrounding gardens and the beautiful view of Rutland Water from the lovely flower filled terrace. The cooking of Aaron Patterson, who began here as a 16-year-old sous chef, easily deserves its long held Michelin star and is rooted in local and seasonal produce, charmingly presented and always delicious. Read expert review From £265per night • The best hotels in Rutland Gidleigh ParkChagford, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Perched atop a bank overlooking private woodlands traced by a boulder-strewn river, Gidleigh’s location is wild and dramatic. The décor is stylish if a little straight-laced, with everything you’d expect in an English country house hotel: antique furniture, wood panelling, stone fireplaces and elegant bouquets of flowers. The 24 bedrooms are decorated individually in a classic English country style, with supersized beds, roll-top baths, televisions, L’Occitane toiletries, spring water from the Gidleigh Estate, bowls of fresh fruit and complimentary decanters of Madeira. Read expert review From £248per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon Askham HallPenrith, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating A mixture of family furniture and paintings have been combined with more modern, or quirky pieces to create something both charming and unusual. The whole place feels part stately home, part private club, but mostly unique. Richard Swale is a gifted chef who draws his influences from, amongst others, Magnus Nilsson of Faviken restaurant in Sweden and Shaun Hill of the Walnut Tree, in Wales. Richard’s food is locally grown, or personally preserved and tastes correspondingly fresh and interesting. Read expert review From £150per night • The best hotels in Cumbria Calcot ManorTetbury, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating A weathered stone manor house and farm building that’s grown to house 35 guest rooms, a gorgeous spa, a function centre in a converted barn, an Ofsted-registered crèche in the kids’ Playzone and two restaurants. Double rooms are in the manor; family rooms overlook the outdoor pool. There’s something incredibly relaxing about this hotel, with 'country modern’ bedrooms that manage to be both cosy and elegant, soothing and spoiling, natural and sophisticated. When it was time to go home, we refused to leave, cancelled everything and booked for another night. It’s honestly that good. Read expert review From £204per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Augill CastleKirkby Stephen, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating Augill Castle stands in 20 acres of grounds in the beautiful upper Eden Valley, within striking distance of both the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. The owners have created a highly individual hotel with minimal rules, a great sense of relaxation and welcome to all – unusual and imaginative with a 'family friends’ feel. The 15 bedrooms are eclectic and slightly eccentric with a mix of antique and contemporary pieces and an array of unusual and pretty bedsteads. Dining is a social occasion. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Cumbria Summer Lodge Country House Hotel & SpaEvershot, Dorset, England 9Telegraph expert rating Decoration and style tends towards the feminine and the flouncy with fabric covered ceilings and padded fabric walls, pictures of dogs, plenty of cushions and so on but they add up, in general, to a feeling of spoiling indulgence and do not, mercifully, overwhelm. The drawing room, designed by the poet and author Thomas Hardy, is admirably classic in style, now painted a pretty blue, and the bedrooms are divinely pretty and comfortable. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Dorset Cowley ManorCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating One of the first of the new breed of contemporary country house hotels to put their spa, C-side, at the heart of their offering. The glass-fronted building is a beautiful piece of modern design, sunk into a hill to one side. The treatments in the four rooms use the hotel’s own Green & Spring products, employing local natural products. There are indoor and outdoor pools and a dedicated manicure and pedicure area, gym, steam room and sauna. Read expert review From £195per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gloucestershire Gilpin Hotel & Lake HouseLake Windermere, Lake District, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is a characterful Georgian house, built in 1901 and owned by three generations of the Cunliffe family. That’s not to say it’s a creaking relic — the décor is glamorous boutique meets country pile. Life at the Gilpin is all about kicking back — and that’s helped by the service, about which it’s hard to say anything negative. Everyone smiles, everyone says hello — yet it’s not overbearing. Fishing, shooting, horse riding, mountain biking, paintballing and treasure hunts can also be organised on-site. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Four Seasons Hotel HampshireWinchfield, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating Built in the 18th century as a manor house, the hotel is set amid 500 acres of green fields and paddocks full of grazing horses. Inside, it’s all slick and stylish, a blend of traditional and contemporary, as befits a metropolitan, cosmopolitan Four Seasons hotel set in English countryside. Bedrooms are sophisticated and elegant, traditional in style but with high-tech amenities and large marble bathrooms, and flexible sleeping options for families. The fine dining restaurant, Seasons, is very elegant, and there is a more casual bistro, a bar with open fire and library for afternoon tea. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire The Pig at CombeGittisham, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Sexy and fun as well as romantic. The 27 rooms are some of the most charming, traditional yet stylish (larders and minibars cleverly hidden inside antique cupboards; some televisions disguised as antique mirrors), comfortable, practical, quirky and soothing of any hotel bedrooms in the land. Head chef Dan Gavriilidis is responsible for the Devon version of the Pigs’ informal '25 Mile’ menu, featuring the produce of the kitchen gardens and poly tunnels and the best locally-sourced ingredients. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Mr & Mrs Smith • The best hotels in Devon Barnsley HouseCirencester, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating What a beauty. With its golden stone, gables and mullion windows this is a dreamily romantic house. But for all that, the building is magnificently upstaged by its garden. There are four acres of formal gardens including a knot garden and a potager. Cream furnishings in the rooms enhance engaging artworks, all based on the theme of nature – a row of bird houses; a chandelier cleverly created out of flower pots. Everything about the restaurant has been calibrated to convey a sense of pleasing simplicity – although of course that requires much painstaking effort. Read expert review From £181per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Ellenborough ParkCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating A group of honeystone buildings is set around a historic Cotswold manor house that was embellished with castle-like towers in the mid-19th century. The 61 generously sized bedrooms are a world away from the shabby-chic looks or the pared back minimalism that are now the norm in other rural retreats. With stripy wallpaper and sprucely comfy armchairs, and with swathes of linen chintz in some rooms, panelling in others, the interiors are a contemporary take on traditional British country style. Read expert review From £126per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Lucknam ParkWiltshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The hotel sits within a 500-acre estate that encompasses meadows, paddocks and woodland. The main building is a beautiful, symmetrical, creeper-covered Palladian mansion dating from 1720. Its public rooms are opulent and elegant, with a traditional country house feel. They include a panelled library, a drawing room with a corniced ceiling, an ornate fireplace as well as tassled curtains and sofas, and The Park Restaurant, laid out with white-clothed tables under a sky-painted ceiling. Read expert review From £230per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wiltshire Lords Of The ManorUpper Slaughter, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating The oldest parts of this mellow-stone manor house date from around 1649, with gables, wings and bay windows added in later centuries. Traditional rather than style-conscious, the public rooms are furnished with antiques. The 26 rooms in total split into five categories, comfortably furnished with embroidered silk throws on beds and soft lighting. The Michelin-starred restaurant is a key reason for staying at this hotel. The £69 three-course dinner menu may include starters of squab pigeon or foie gras with smoked eel and mains of Gloucestershire Old Spot suckling pig with rhubarb or local venison. Read expert review From £150per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Hotel EndsleighTavistock, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Built in 1812 as the holiday home for the Duchess of Bedford, Georgiana Russell, this wildly romantic, chintz-free country estate, run by Channel 5’s Hotel Inspector, Alex Polizzi, is steeped in royal history. It’s a verdantly gardened, Grade 1-listed Eden between Dartmoor and Exmoor, with shell houses and hidden glades for romantic tête-à-têtes. The cream teas are worth the journey alone: a help-yourself affair of just-baked scones accompanied by massive urns of clotted cream and fruit-laden strawberry jam. Breakfasts, too, are a cut above the rivals. Read expert review From £198per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon The House at BeaverbrookSurrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Step into a bygone era of English high society, original artworks and antiques at this luxurious country house hotel, where press baron Lord Beaverbrook entertained world leaders and literary greats. Grandeur and opulence ooze from every room, beautifully designed by Susie Atkinson: A cosy morning room with log fire and plump, squishy sofas offers stunning views of the North Downs and Italianate garden. The library's shelves heave with weighty tomes, and the UK's first home cinema, where Beaverbrook and Sir Winston Churchill discussed the war's progress, still has the original wood-panelling and lighting. Read expert review From £225per night • The best hotels in Surrey Bovey CastleMoretonhampstead, Dartmoor, England 9Telegraph expert rating This grand stately pile on a sporting estate in Dartmoor National Park caters for every whim, whether rugged outdoor pursuits or fine dining and pampering. Inside, there’s a heated swimming pool and whirlpool with deckchairs overlooking the grounds, plus steam room, sauna and gym, while the ESPA Spa offers an extensive range of treatments. Outside, in the 275-acre grounds, there’s an 18-hole championship golf course, tennis courts, a croquet pitch, archery and rifle range, putting green, helipad and beautiful lakeside walks to be had. Read expert review From £112per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels on Dartmoor Great FostersEgham, Surrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Italian gilt furniture, exquisite Flemish tapestries, elaborate Jacobean fireplaces and a one-Michelin-starred restaurant are the crowning glories of this luxury country-house hotel – once a 16th-century royal hunting lodge used by both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Oak paneling, beautifully-carved Jacobean fire-pieces plus a secret staircase – even 17th-century graffiti – await guests who enter the Grade I-listed building via a low wicket door. Traces of royal ancestry are everywhere, in Elizabeth’s coat of arms above the porch, and on the ceiling, dating from the 1500s and decorated with Queen Anne Boleyn’s personal crests. Read expert review From £122per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Surrey Wales Palé HallLlandderfel, Gwynedd, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating Complete with spire, porte-cochère and a grand entrance hall, hand stencilled by the owners, this mansion feels regal and is astonishingly well preserved. The wealth of period features: stained-glass, tiles, wood panelling, chandeliers, fireplaces and so on, are complemented by Angela Harper’s decoration, making liberal use of antiques, Zoffany and Sanderson wallpapers, paintings (including Snowdonia artist Rob Reen’s striking canvases of sheep) and collections of glass. Read expert review From £199per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gwynedd Gliffaes Country House HotelBrecon Beacons, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating What’s not to love? Down a rural track, Gliffaes reclines peacefully in 33-acre grounds in the shadow of the Black Mountains and on the edge of the River Usk. With antique dressers, floral drapes, retro Roberts radios, and carpets you can sink your toes into, the look is traditionally elegant, never twee. Excellent restaurant. Read expert review From £110per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Bodysgallen Hall and SpaLlandudno, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The medieval core of a fine 16th-century mansion, the tower was built as a lookout for Conwy Castle. The higher you climb, the older its spiralling staircase becomes: Victorian at the bottom, 13th-century at the top. The encircling view is enthralling. As you turn, first Conwy Castle, then Snowdonia, then the sea and Anglesey, then Great Orme, catching the golden light, and lastly Llandudno, with the promise of its marvellous 19th-century promenade, come into view. Read expert review From £185per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The most romantic hotels in Wales Llangoed HallPowys, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating The house itself, redesigned by Clough Williams-Ellis in 1912, has great presence. Later bought and restored by Sir Bernard Ashley, widower of Laura, family photographs, as well as his fine collection of early 20th-century British paintings, including a collection of prints by James McNeil Whistler abound. Guests are encouraged to relax, curl up on sofas and play the piano. Read expert review From £99per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales The GroveNarberth, Pembrokeshire, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is set in 26 acres of grounds amid deep countryside, with distant views of the Preseli Hills. The main building is a handsome three-storey residence with Georgian proportions and distinctive Arts and Crafts panelling and fireplaces. The lounges – cosy yet elegant, with real fires, window seats, plush sofas and modern prints and paintings of coastal Pembrokeshire – set the tone of the whole property. There are 26 rooms in total. Expect treats such as the softest of sheets, posh toiletries, thick towels and house-made biscotti. Read expert review From £145per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Scotland The Gleneagles HotelAuchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating Built in the 1920s as a railway resort hotel, the design is Scottish Baronial meets French chateau, with all the opulent comfort of a grand country house on steroids. (A dull-looking modern addition to one side is easily ignored). It’s so big you need the map provided when you arrive, but this five-star formality comes with a splendid sense of ease: time seems to slow from the moment the kilted doorman welcomes you to the hotel. Read expert review From £265per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Scotland Inverlochy Castle HotelFort William, Highlands, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating No bows to passing fashions here. Moving with the times means waterfall showers, Bang & Olufsen stereos and televisions, while the unashamedly country house style - all swags, gilt, silk and brocade, sparkling crystal, polished wood and an all-pervading sense of time suspended, remains. Nowhere else makes grandeur so cosy, combining Jacobite rose wallpaper, Venetian chandeliers and French Empire-style ceiling frescos with perfectly judged élan. Dinner begins with a drink by the fire in the Great Hall, followed by a delightfully light-handed five-course menu with a distinctly Highland accent. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • Top 10: the best Scottish castle hotels Isle of Eriska HotelArgyll & Bute, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating Calm and solitude are assured in a haven of herons and badgers, where the loudest sound is likely to be a fishing boat puttering over tranquil water. The trappings of Victorian wealth and privilege pervade drawing rooms filled with deep sofas, fireplaces and books in the imposing granite and red sandstone Big House. Elegant and comfortable without being stuffy, the ambiance is warm and welcoming, with soft, bright furnishings and piles of wellingtons by the front door of the oak-panelled hall. Carry on, Jeeves. Read expert review From £330per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels for spa breaks in Scotland Killiecrankie HotelPerth and Kinross, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating With direct access to the beautiful Pass of Killiecrankie, the deep river gorge formed by the River Garry, the whitewashed 1840s house has been a hotel since 1939. There are 10 pretty and homely rooms, with antique pieces, thick curtains and very comfortable beds. No two are the same: they are all shapes and sizes and some of the bathrooms are very small. You’ll find a vase of fresh flowers and the Egyptian cotton sheets will be turned down while you are at dinner. Read expert review From £220per night • Scotland hotels: the best places to stay on Scottish lochs The Roxburghe Hotel And Golf CourseKelso, Scottish Borders, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating The drawing room at The Roxburghe feels like a private house, with its family portraits and photographs, books and ornaments, and its welcoming groups of sofas and armchairs. Elsewhere there are tartan carpets, collections of whiskey and gin, plentiful open fires and the homely smell of woodsmoke. Bedrooms, some of which were designed by the Duchess of Roxburghe, are all different and decorated in traditional country house style. Three rooms have open fires, with coal and logs provided - the greatest luxury in a country hotel bedroom. Read expert review From £171per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

The best country house hotels in Britain

The British country house hotel was born in 1949, brought to us in the pink and frilly shape of Sharrow Bay, overlooking Ullswater in the Lake District. Presided over by a splendid couple, Francis Coulson and his partner Brian Sack, it came complete with a gargantuan afternoon tea, and Sack’s famous Icky Sticky Toffee Pudding and Coulson’s bedtime poems on the pillow. People adored it. There had been leisure hotels in Britain before, of course, but this was the first where you could be assured of being personally pampered in beautiful rural surroundings, with a committed owner at the helm offering a warm welcome, decent food, peace and quiet. Hundreds of characterful country house hotels have followed, and today there’s a bewildering amount from which to choose. Here we present the cream of the crop. While some continue to offer no more than the pleasures of a beautiful old house, a roaring fire and a cup of tea, others cater to our increased demands: for spas, cookery courses and activities such as foraging. All these hotels share in common comfort, excellent food and the joys of the English countryside. England Lime WoodNew Forest, Hampshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating It’s the attention to detail throughout Lime Wood that makes it special. The oak doors are thick and stylised sitting rooms melt one into the other, pale lemon into lilac into mint green, each with an open fire. As for the food, that most grounded of all celebrity chefs, Angela Hartnett, has joined forces with existing Lime Wood chef Luke Holder and to produce Italian inspired dishes that are as informal, yet polished as their surroundings. Read expert review From £245per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire • Find exclusive UK hotel and restaurant offers from Telegraph Travel Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'SaisonsOxfordshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The style is a happy marriage between stately Oxfordshire and eccentric French fancy. The honey-coloured Manor house creates an attractive focus around which an eclectic mix of 15th-century ponds, Provençal lavender rows, a Japanese garden, kitsch sculptures and a wild mushroom patch can all co-exist. Seasonality is king in its two-Michelin starred restaurant. A 1930s-style bar serves comforting cocktails and the wine cellar stocks a French dominated list of more than 1,000 different wines. Read expert review From £756per night • The best country house hotels in Britain Lympstone ManorExmouth, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Britain's most exciting new country house hotel in decades, with double-Michelin-starred BBC Great British Menu icon Michael Caines MBE at the helm. The man himself takes the time to greet guests and can often be spied striding through the halls in his white chef overalls. Don't miss the eight-course tasting menu dinner. Many chefs get bogged down in zany experiments with foams and moleculars. Michael prefers to bravely poke at the booby-trapped boundary between sumptuous and sickly. Book a room with an outdoor bath overlooking the golden syrup sunsets of the Exe estuary. Read expert review From £290per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com The best hotels in Oxfordshire Save up to 70% on hotel deals via our partner Secret Escapes ClivedenTaplow, Berkshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating This has to be one of the loveliest spots for a hotel, overlooking a spectacular 19th-century parterre and surrounded by acres of ancient woodland running down to the Thames. Contrary to its appearance, Cliveden is not in the least bit stuck up and doesn’t mind whether you turn up in a Ferrari or a Fiat. The house has witnessed much intrigue over the years – it was the setting for the infamous Profumo affair – and a hint of naughtiness remains. Read expert review From £340per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Berkshire Chewton Glen HotelNew Forest, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel has lovely grounds and guests can follow the stream through the woods to emerge at Naish Beach, with a view of the Needles rising from the sea. Facilities are legion: a lavish spa, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis centre, nine-hole golf course and many activities, from archery and buggy riding to duck herding. Bedrooms and suites, in many different styles, display astonishing attention to detail, down to the stamped postcards on each desk. Read expert review From £315per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire Hambleton HallRutland, East Midlands, England 9Telegraph expert rating Beautifully decorated by Stefa Hart, who with her husband Tim has owned and run Hambleton Hall since 1979, the house exudes a feeling of controlled and carefully orchestrated wellbeing without ever feeling unnatural or overly theatrical. The flowing country house good looks are matched by the surrounding gardens and the beautiful view of Rutland Water from the lovely flower filled terrace. The cooking of Aaron Patterson, who began here as a 16-year-old sous chef, easily deserves its long held Michelin star and is rooted in local and seasonal produce, charmingly presented and always delicious. Read expert review From £265per night • The best hotels in Rutland Gidleigh ParkChagford, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Perched atop a bank overlooking private woodlands traced by a boulder-strewn river, Gidleigh’s location is wild and dramatic. The décor is stylish if a little straight-laced, with everything you’d expect in an English country house hotel: antique furniture, wood panelling, stone fireplaces and elegant bouquets of flowers. The 24 bedrooms are decorated individually in a classic English country style, with supersized beds, roll-top baths, televisions, L’Occitane toiletries, spring water from the Gidleigh Estate, bowls of fresh fruit and complimentary decanters of Madeira. Read expert review From £248per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon Askham HallPenrith, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating A mixture of family furniture and paintings have been combined with more modern, or quirky pieces to create something both charming and unusual. The whole place feels part stately home, part private club, but mostly unique. Richard Swale is a gifted chef who draws his influences from, amongst others, Magnus Nilsson of Faviken restaurant in Sweden and Shaun Hill of the Walnut Tree, in Wales. Richard’s food is locally grown, or personally preserved and tastes correspondingly fresh and interesting. Read expert review From £150per night • The best hotels in Cumbria Calcot ManorTetbury, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating A weathered stone manor house and farm building that’s grown to house 35 guest rooms, a gorgeous spa, a function centre in a converted barn, an Ofsted-registered crèche in the kids’ Playzone and two restaurants. Double rooms are in the manor; family rooms overlook the outdoor pool. There’s something incredibly relaxing about this hotel, with 'country modern’ bedrooms that manage to be both cosy and elegant, soothing and spoiling, natural and sophisticated. When it was time to go home, we refused to leave, cancelled everything and booked for another night. It’s honestly that good. Read expert review From £204per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Augill CastleKirkby Stephen, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating Augill Castle stands in 20 acres of grounds in the beautiful upper Eden Valley, within striking distance of both the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. The owners have created a highly individual hotel with minimal rules, a great sense of relaxation and welcome to all – unusual and imaginative with a 'family friends’ feel. The 15 bedrooms are eclectic and slightly eccentric with a mix of antique and contemporary pieces and an array of unusual and pretty bedsteads. Dining is a social occasion. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Cumbria Summer Lodge Country House Hotel & SpaEvershot, Dorset, England 9Telegraph expert rating Decoration and style tends towards the feminine and the flouncy with fabric covered ceilings and padded fabric walls, pictures of dogs, plenty of cushions and so on but they add up, in general, to a feeling of spoiling indulgence and do not, mercifully, overwhelm. The drawing room, designed by the poet and author Thomas Hardy, is admirably classic in style, now painted a pretty blue, and the bedrooms are divinely pretty and comfortable. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Dorset Cowley ManorCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating One of the first of the new breed of contemporary country house hotels to put their spa, C-side, at the heart of their offering. The glass-fronted building is a beautiful piece of modern design, sunk into a hill to one side. The treatments in the four rooms use the hotel’s own Green & Spring products, employing local natural products. There are indoor and outdoor pools and a dedicated manicure and pedicure area, gym, steam room and sauna. Read expert review From £195per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gloucestershire Gilpin Hotel & Lake HouseLake Windermere, Lake District, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is a characterful Georgian house, built in 1901 and owned by three generations of the Cunliffe family. That’s not to say it’s a creaking relic — the décor is glamorous boutique meets country pile. Life at the Gilpin is all about kicking back — and that’s helped by the service, about which it’s hard to say anything negative. Everyone smiles, everyone says hello — yet it’s not overbearing. Fishing, shooting, horse riding, mountain biking, paintballing and treasure hunts can also be organised on-site. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Four Seasons Hotel HampshireWinchfield, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating Built in the 18th century as a manor house, the hotel is set amid 500 acres of green fields and paddocks full of grazing horses. Inside, it’s all slick and stylish, a blend of traditional and contemporary, as befits a metropolitan, cosmopolitan Four Seasons hotel set in English countryside. Bedrooms are sophisticated and elegant, traditional in style but with high-tech amenities and large marble bathrooms, and flexible sleeping options for families. The fine dining restaurant, Seasons, is very elegant, and there is a more casual bistro, a bar with open fire and library for afternoon tea. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire The Pig at CombeGittisham, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Sexy and fun as well as romantic. The 27 rooms are some of the most charming, traditional yet stylish (larders and minibars cleverly hidden inside antique cupboards; some televisions disguised as antique mirrors), comfortable, practical, quirky and soothing of any hotel bedrooms in the land. Head chef Dan Gavriilidis is responsible for the Devon version of the Pigs’ informal '25 Mile’ menu, featuring the produce of the kitchen gardens and poly tunnels and the best locally-sourced ingredients. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Mr & Mrs Smith • The best hotels in Devon Barnsley HouseCirencester, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating What a beauty. With its golden stone, gables and mullion windows this is a dreamily romantic house. But for all that, the building is magnificently upstaged by its garden. There are four acres of formal gardens including a knot garden and a potager. Cream furnishings in the rooms enhance engaging artworks, all based on the theme of nature – a row of bird houses; a chandelier cleverly created out of flower pots. Everything about the restaurant has been calibrated to convey a sense of pleasing simplicity – although of course that requires much painstaking effort. Read expert review From £181per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Ellenborough ParkCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating A group of honeystone buildings is set around a historic Cotswold manor house that was embellished with castle-like towers in the mid-19th century. The 61 generously sized bedrooms are a world away from the shabby-chic looks or the pared back minimalism that are now the norm in other rural retreats. With stripy wallpaper and sprucely comfy armchairs, and with swathes of linen chintz in some rooms, panelling in others, the interiors are a contemporary take on traditional British country style. Read expert review From £126per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Lucknam ParkWiltshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The hotel sits within a 500-acre estate that encompasses meadows, paddocks and woodland. The main building is a beautiful, symmetrical, creeper-covered Palladian mansion dating from 1720. Its public rooms are opulent and elegant, with a traditional country house feel. They include a panelled library, a drawing room with a corniced ceiling, an ornate fireplace as well as tassled curtains and sofas, and The Park Restaurant, laid out with white-clothed tables under a sky-painted ceiling. Read expert review From £230per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wiltshire Lords Of The ManorUpper Slaughter, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating The oldest parts of this mellow-stone manor house date from around 1649, with gables, wings and bay windows added in later centuries. Traditional rather than style-conscious, the public rooms are furnished with antiques. The 26 rooms in total split into five categories, comfortably furnished with embroidered silk throws on beds and soft lighting. The Michelin-starred restaurant is a key reason for staying at this hotel. The £69 three-course dinner menu may include starters of squab pigeon or foie gras with smoked eel and mains of Gloucestershire Old Spot suckling pig with rhubarb or local venison. Read expert review From £150per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Hotel EndsleighTavistock, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Built in 1812 as the holiday home for the Duchess of Bedford, Georgiana Russell, this wildly romantic, chintz-free country estate, run by Channel 5’s Hotel Inspector, Alex Polizzi, is steeped in royal history. It’s a verdantly gardened, Grade 1-listed Eden between Dartmoor and Exmoor, with shell houses and hidden glades for romantic tête-à-têtes. The cream teas are worth the journey alone: a help-yourself affair of just-baked scones accompanied by massive urns of clotted cream and fruit-laden strawberry jam. Breakfasts, too, are a cut above the rivals. Read expert review From £198per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon The House at BeaverbrookSurrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Step into a bygone era of English high society, original artworks and antiques at this luxurious country house hotel, where press baron Lord Beaverbrook entertained world leaders and literary greats. Grandeur and opulence ooze from every room, beautifully designed by Susie Atkinson: A cosy morning room with log fire and plump, squishy sofas offers stunning views of the North Downs and Italianate garden. The library's shelves heave with weighty tomes, and the UK's first home cinema, where Beaverbrook and Sir Winston Churchill discussed the war's progress, still has the original wood-panelling and lighting. Read expert review From £225per night • The best hotels in Surrey Bovey CastleMoretonhampstead, Dartmoor, England 9Telegraph expert rating This grand stately pile on a sporting estate in Dartmoor National Park caters for every whim, whether rugged outdoor pursuits or fine dining and pampering. Inside, there’s a heated swimming pool and whirlpool with deckchairs overlooking the grounds, plus steam room, sauna and gym, while the ESPA Spa offers an extensive range of treatments. Outside, in the 275-acre grounds, there’s an 18-hole championship golf course, tennis courts, a croquet pitch, archery and rifle range, putting green, helipad and beautiful lakeside walks to be had. Read expert review From £112per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels on Dartmoor Great FostersEgham, Surrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Italian gilt furniture, exquisite Flemish tapestries, elaborate Jacobean fireplaces and a one-Michelin-starred restaurant are the crowning glories of this luxury country-house hotel – once a 16th-century royal hunting lodge used by both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Oak paneling, beautifully-carved Jacobean fire-pieces plus a secret staircase – even 17th-century graffiti – await guests who enter the Grade I-listed building via a low wicket door. Traces of royal ancestry are everywhere, in Elizabeth’s coat of arms above the porch, and on the ceiling, dating from the 1500s and decorated with Queen Anne Boleyn’s personal crests. Read expert review From £122per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Surrey Wales Palé HallLlandderfel, Gwynedd, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating Complete with spire, porte-cochère and a grand entrance hall, hand stencilled by the owners, this mansion feels regal and is astonishingly well preserved. The wealth of period features: stained-glass, tiles, wood panelling, chandeliers, fireplaces and so on, are complemented by Angela Harper’s decoration, making liberal use of antiques, Zoffany and Sanderson wallpapers, paintings (including Snowdonia artist Rob Reen’s striking canvases of sheep) and collections of glass. Read expert review From £199per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gwynedd Gliffaes Country House HotelBrecon Beacons, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating What’s not to love? Down a rural track, Gliffaes reclines peacefully in 33-acre grounds in the shadow of the Black Mountains and on the edge of the River Usk. With antique dressers, floral drapes, retro Roberts radios, and carpets you can sink your toes into, the look is traditionally elegant, never twee. Excellent restaurant. Read expert review From £110per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Bodysgallen Hall and SpaLlandudno, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The medieval core of a fine 16th-century mansion, the tower was built as a lookout for Conwy Castle. The higher you climb, the older its spiralling staircase becomes: Victorian at the bottom, 13th-century at the top. The encircling view is enthralling. As you turn, first Conwy Castle, then Snowdonia, then the sea and Anglesey, then Great Orme, catching the golden light, and lastly Llandudno, with the promise of its marvellous 19th-century promenade, come into view. Read expert review From £185per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The most romantic hotels in Wales Llangoed HallPowys, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating The house itself, redesigned by Clough Williams-Ellis in 1912, has great presence. Later bought and restored by Sir Bernard Ashley, widower of Laura, family photographs, as well as his fine collection of early 20th-century British paintings, including a collection of prints by James McNeil Whistler abound. Guests are encouraged to relax, curl up on sofas and play the piano. Read expert review From £99per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales The GroveNarberth, Pembrokeshire, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is set in 26 acres of grounds amid deep countryside, with distant views of the Preseli Hills. The main building is a handsome three-storey residence with Georgian proportions and distinctive Arts and Crafts panelling and fireplaces. The lounges – cosy yet elegant, with real fires, window seats, plush sofas and modern prints and paintings of coastal Pembrokeshire – set the tone of the whole property. There are 26 rooms in total. Expect treats such as the softest of sheets, posh toiletries, thick towels and house-made biscotti. Read expert review From £145per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Scotland The Gleneagles HotelAuchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating Built in the 1920s as a railway resort hotel, the design is Scottish Baronial meets French chateau, with all the opulent comfort of a grand country house on steroids. (A dull-looking modern addition to one side is easily ignored). It’s so big you need the map provided when you arrive, but this five-star formality comes with a splendid sense of ease: time seems to slow from the moment the kilted doorman welcomes you to the hotel. Read expert review From £265per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Scotland Inverlochy Castle HotelFort William, Highlands, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating No bows to passing fashions here. Moving with the times means waterfall showers, Bang & Olufsen stereos and televisions, while the unashamedly country house style - all swags, gilt, silk and brocade, sparkling crystal, polished wood and an all-pervading sense of time suspended, remains. Nowhere else makes grandeur so cosy, combining Jacobite rose wallpaper, Venetian chandeliers and French Empire-style ceiling frescos with perfectly judged élan. Dinner begins with a drink by the fire in the Great Hall, followed by a delightfully light-handed five-course menu with a distinctly Highland accent. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • Top 10: the best Scottish castle hotels Isle of Eriska HotelArgyll & Bute, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating Calm and solitude are assured in a haven of herons and badgers, where the loudest sound is likely to be a fishing boat puttering over tranquil water. The trappings of Victorian wealth and privilege pervade drawing rooms filled with deep sofas, fireplaces and books in the imposing granite and red sandstone Big House. Elegant and comfortable without being stuffy, the ambiance is warm and welcoming, with soft, bright furnishings and piles of wellingtons by the front door of the oak-panelled hall. Carry on, Jeeves. Read expert review From £330per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels for spa breaks in Scotland Killiecrankie HotelPerth and Kinross, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating With direct access to the beautiful Pass of Killiecrankie, the deep river gorge formed by the River Garry, the whitewashed 1840s house has been a hotel since 1939. There are 10 pretty and homely rooms, with antique pieces, thick curtains and very comfortable beds. No two are the same: they are all shapes and sizes and some of the bathrooms are very small. You’ll find a vase of fresh flowers and the Egyptian cotton sheets will be turned down while you are at dinner. Read expert review From £220per night • Scotland hotels: the best places to stay on Scottish lochs The Roxburghe Hotel And Golf CourseKelso, Scottish Borders, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating The drawing room at The Roxburghe feels like a private house, with its family portraits and photographs, books and ornaments, and its welcoming groups of sofas and armchairs. Elsewhere there are tartan carpets, collections of whiskey and gin, plentiful open fires and the homely smell of woodsmoke. Bedrooms, some of which were designed by the Duchess of Roxburghe, are all different and decorated in traditional country house style. Three rooms have open fires, with coal and logs provided - the greatest luxury in a country hotel bedroom. Read expert review From £171per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

The best country house hotels in Britain

The British country house hotel was born in 1949, brought to us in the pink and frilly shape of Sharrow Bay, overlooking Ullswater in the Lake District. Presided over by a splendid couple, Francis Coulson and his partner Brian Sack, it came complete with a gargantuan afternoon tea, and Sack’s famous Icky Sticky Toffee Pudding and Coulson’s bedtime poems on the pillow. People adored it. There had been leisure hotels in Britain before, of course, but this was the first where you could be assured of being personally pampered in beautiful rural surroundings, with a committed owner at the helm offering a warm welcome, decent food, peace and quiet. Hundreds of characterful country house hotels have followed, and today there’s a bewildering amount from which to choose. Here we present the cream of the crop. While some continue to offer no more than the pleasures of a beautiful old house, a roaring fire and a cup of tea, others cater to our increased demands: for spas, cookery courses and activities such as foraging. All these hotels share in common comfort, excellent food and the joys of the English countryside. England Lime WoodNew Forest, Hampshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating It’s the attention to detail throughout Lime Wood that makes it special. The oak doors are thick and stylised sitting rooms melt one into the other, pale lemon into lilac into mint green, each with an open fire. As for the food, that most grounded of all celebrity chefs, Angela Hartnett, has joined forces with existing Lime Wood chef Luke Holder and to produce Italian inspired dishes that are as informal, yet polished as their surroundings. Read expert review From £245per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire • Find exclusive UK hotel and restaurant offers from Telegraph Travel Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'SaisonsOxfordshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The style is a happy marriage between stately Oxfordshire and eccentric French fancy. The honey-coloured Manor house creates an attractive focus around which an eclectic mix of 15th-century ponds, Provençal lavender rows, a Japanese garden, kitsch sculptures and a wild mushroom patch can all co-exist. Seasonality is king in its two-Michelin starred restaurant. A 1930s-style bar serves comforting cocktails and the wine cellar stocks a French dominated list of more than 1,000 different wines. Read expert review From £756per night • The best country house hotels in Britain Lympstone ManorExmouth, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Britain's most exciting new country house hotel in decades, with double-Michelin-starred BBC Great British Menu icon Michael Caines MBE at the helm. The man himself takes the time to greet guests and can often be spied striding through the halls in his white chef overalls. Don't miss the eight-course tasting menu dinner. Many chefs get bogged down in zany experiments with foams and moleculars. Michael prefers to bravely poke at the booby-trapped boundary between sumptuous and sickly. Book a room with an outdoor bath overlooking the golden syrup sunsets of the Exe estuary. Read expert review From £290per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com The best hotels in Oxfordshire Save up to 70% on hotel deals via our partner Secret Escapes ClivedenTaplow, Berkshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating This has to be one of the loveliest spots for a hotel, overlooking a spectacular 19th-century parterre and surrounded by acres of ancient woodland running down to the Thames. Contrary to its appearance, Cliveden is not in the least bit stuck up and doesn’t mind whether you turn up in a Ferrari or a Fiat. The house has witnessed much intrigue over the years – it was the setting for the infamous Profumo affair – and a hint of naughtiness remains. Read expert review From £340per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Berkshire Chewton Glen HotelNew Forest, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel has lovely grounds and guests can follow the stream through the woods to emerge at Naish Beach, with a view of the Needles rising from the sea. Facilities are legion: a lavish spa, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis centre, nine-hole golf course and many activities, from archery and buggy riding to duck herding. Bedrooms and suites, in many different styles, display astonishing attention to detail, down to the stamped postcards on each desk. Read expert review From £315per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire Hambleton HallRutland, East Midlands, England 9Telegraph expert rating Beautifully decorated by Stefa Hart, who with her husband Tim has owned and run Hambleton Hall since 1979, the house exudes a feeling of controlled and carefully orchestrated wellbeing without ever feeling unnatural or overly theatrical. The flowing country house good looks are matched by the surrounding gardens and the beautiful view of Rutland Water from the lovely flower filled terrace. The cooking of Aaron Patterson, who began here as a 16-year-old sous chef, easily deserves its long held Michelin star and is rooted in local and seasonal produce, charmingly presented and always delicious. Read expert review From £265per night • The best hotels in Rutland Gidleigh ParkChagford, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Perched atop a bank overlooking private woodlands traced by a boulder-strewn river, Gidleigh’s location is wild and dramatic. The décor is stylish if a little straight-laced, with everything you’d expect in an English country house hotel: antique furniture, wood panelling, stone fireplaces and elegant bouquets of flowers. The 24 bedrooms are decorated individually in a classic English country style, with supersized beds, roll-top baths, televisions, L’Occitane toiletries, spring water from the Gidleigh Estate, bowls of fresh fruit and complimentary decanters of Madeira. Read expert review From £248per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon Askham HallPenrith, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating A mixture of family furniture and paintings have been combined with more modern, or quirky pieces to create something both charming and unusual. The whole place feels part stately home, part private club, but mostly unique. Richard Swale is a gifted chef who draws his influences from, amongst others, Magnus Nilsson of Faviken restaurant in Sweden and Shaun Hill of the Walnut Tree, in Wales. Richard’s food is locally grown, or personally preserved and tastes correspondingly fresh and interesting. Read expert review From £150per night • The best hotels in Cumbria Calcot ManorTetbury, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating A weathered stone manor house and farm building that’s grown to house 35 guest rooms, a gorgeous spa, a function centre in a converted barn, an Ofsted-registered crèche in the kids’ Playzone and two restaurants. Double rooms are in the manor; family rooms overlook the outdoor pool. There’s something incredibly relaxing about this hotel, with 'country modern’ bedrooms that manage to be both cosy and elegant, soothing and spoiling, natural and sophisticated. When it was time to go home, we refused to leave, cancelled everything and booked for another night. It’s honestly that good. Read expert review From £204per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Augill CastleKirkby Stephen, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating Augill Castle stands in 20 acres of grounds in the beautiful upper Eden Valley, within striking distance of both the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. The owners have created a highly individual hotel with minimal rules, a great sense of relaxation and welcome to all – unusual and imaginative with a 'family friends’ feel. The 15 bedrooms are eclectic and slightly eccentric with a mix of antique and contemporary pieces and an array of unusual and pretty bedsteads. Dining is a social occasion. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Cumbria Summer Lodge Country House Hotel & SpaEvershot, Dorset, England 9Telegraph expert rating Decoration and style tends towards the feminine and the flouncy with fabric covered ceilings and padded fabric walls, pictures of dogs, plenty of cushions and so on but they add up, in general, to a feeling of spoiling indulgence and do not, mercifully, overwhelm. The drawing room, designed by the poet and author Thomas Hardy, is admirably classic in style, now painted a pretty blue, and the bedrooms are divinely pretty and comfortable. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Dorset Cowley ManorCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating One of the first of the new breed of contemporary country house hotels to put their spa, C-side, at the heart of their offering. The glass-fronted building is a beautiful piece of modern design, sunk into a hill to one side. The treatments in the four rooms use the hotel’s own Green & Spring products, employing local natural products. There are indoor and outdoor pools and a dedicated manicure and pedicure area, gym, steam room and sauna. Read expert review From £195per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gloucestershire Gilpin Hotel & Lake HouseLake Windermere, Lake District, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is a characterful Georgian house, built in 1901 and owned by three generations of the Cunliffe family. That’s not to say it’s a creaking relic — the décor is glamorous boutique meets country pile. Life at the Gilpin is all about kicking back — and that’s helped by the service, about which it’s hard to say anything negative. Everyone smiles, everyone says hello — yet it’s not overbearing. Fishing, shooting, horse riding, mountain biking, paintballing and treasure hunts can also be organised on-site. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Four Seasons Hotel HampshireWinchfield, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating Built in the 18th century as a manor house, the hotel is set amid 500 acres of green fields and paddocks full of grazing horses. Inside, it’s all slick and stylish, a blend of traditional and contemporary, as befits a metropolitan, cosmopolitan Four Seasons hotel set in English countryside. Bedrooms are sophisticated and elegant, traditional in style but with high-tech amenities and large marble bathrooms, and flexible sleeping options for families. The fine dining restaurant, Seasons, is very elegant, and there is a more casual bistro, a bar with open fire and library for afternoon tea. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire The Pig at CombeGittisham, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Sexy and fun as well as romantic. The 27 rooms are some of the most charming, traditional yet stylish (larders and minibars cleverly hidden inside antique cupboards; some televisions disguised as antique mirrors), comfortable, practical, quirky and soothing of any hotel bedrooms in the land. Head chef Dan Gavriilidis is responsible for the Devon version of the Pigs’ informal '25 Mile’ menu, featuring the produce of the kitchen gardens and poly tunnels and the best locally-sourced ingredients. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Mr & Mrs Smith • The best hotels in Devon Barnsley HouseCirencester, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating What a beauty. With its golden stone, gables and mullion windows this is a dreamily romantic house. But for all that, the building is magnificently upstaged by its garden. There are four acres of formal gardens including a knot garden and a potager. Cream furnishings in the rooms enhance engaging artworks, all based on the theme of nature – a row of bird houses; a chandelier cleverly created out of flower pots. Everything about the restaurant has been calibrated to convey a sense of pleasing simplicity – although of course that requires much painstaking effort. Read expert review From £181per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Ellenborough ParkCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating A group of honeystone buildings is set around a historic Cotswold manor house that was embellished with castle-like towers in the mid-19th century. The 61 generously sized bedrooms are a world away from the shabby-chic looks or the pared back minimalism that are now the norm in other rural retreats. With stripy wallpaper and sprucely comfy armchairs, and with swathes of linen chintz in some rooms, panelling in others, the interiors are a contemporary take on traditional British country style. Read expert review From £126per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Lucknam ParkWiltshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The hotel sits within a 500-acre estate that encompasses meadows, paddocks and woodland. The main building is a beautiful, symmetrical, creeper-covered Palladian mansion dating from 1720. Its public rooms are opulent and elegant, with a traditional country house feel. They include a panelled library, a drawing room with a corniced ceiling, an ornate fireplace as well as tassled curtains and sofas, and The Park Restaurant, laid out with white-clothed tables under a sky-painted ceiling. Read expert review From £230per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wiltshire Lords Of The ManorUpper Slaughter, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating The oldest parts of this mellow-stone manor house date from around 1649, with gables, wings and bay windows added in later centuries. Traditional rather than style-conscious, the public rooms are furnished with antiques. The 26 rooms in total split into five categories, comfortably furnished with embroidered silk throws on beds and soft lighting. The Michelin-starred restaurant is a key reason for staying at this hotel. The £69 three-course dinner menu may include starters of squab pigeon or foie gras with smoked eel and mains of Gloucestershire Old Spot suckling pig with rhubarb or local venison. Read expert review From £150per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Hotel EndsleighTavistock, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Built in 1812 as the holiday home for the Duchess of Bedford, Georgiana Russell, this wildly romantic, chintz-free country estate, run by Channel 5’s Hotel Inspector, Alex Polizzi, is steeped in royal history. It’s a verdantly gardened, Grade 1-listed Eden between Dartmoor and Exmoor, with shell houses and hidden glades for romantic tête-à-têtes. The cream teas are worth the journey alone: a help-yourself affair of just-baked scones accompanied by massive urns of clotted cream and fruit-laden strawberry jam. Breakfasts, too, are a cut above the rivals. Read expert review From £198per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon The House at BeaverbrookSurrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Step into a bygone era of English high society, original artworks and antiques at this luxurious country house hotel, where press baron Lord Beaverbrook entertained world leaders and literary greats. Grandeur and opulence ooze from every room, beautifully designed by Susie Atkinson: A cosy morning room with log fire and plump, squishy sofas offers stunning views of the North Downs and Italianate garden. The library's shelves heave with weighty tomes, and the UK's first home cinema, where Beaverbrook and Sir Winston Churchill discussed the war's progress, still has the original wood-panelling and lighting. Read expert review From £225per night • The best hotels in Surrey Bovey CastleMoretonhampstead, Dartmoor, England 9Telegraph expert rating This grand stately pile on a sporting estate in Dartmoor National Park caters for every whim, whether rugged outdoor pursuits or fine dining and pampering. Inside, there’s a heated swimming pool and whirlpool with deckchairs overlooking the grounds, plus steam room, sauna and gym, while the ESPA Spa offers an extensive range of treatments. Outside, in the 275-acre grounds, there’s an 18-hole championship golf course, tennis courts, a croquet pitch, archery and rifle range, putting green, helipad and beautiful lakeside walks to be had. Read expert review From £112per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels on Dartmoor Great FostersEgham, Surrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Italian gilt furniture, exquisite Flemish tapestries, elaborate Jacobean fireplaces and a one-Michelin-starred restaurant are the crowning glories of this luxury country-house hotel – once a 16th-century royal hunting lodge used by both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Oak paneling, beautifully-carved Jacobean fire-pieces plus a secret staircase – even 17th-century graffiti – await guests who enter the Grade I-listed building via a low wicket door. Traces of royal ancestry are everywhere, in Elizabeth’s coat of arms above the porch, and on the ceiling, dating from the 1500s and decorated with Queen Anne Boleyn’s personal crests. Read expert review From £122per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Surrey Wales Palé HallLlandderfel, Gwynedd, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating Complete with spire, porte-cochère and a grand entrance hall, hand stencilled by the owners, this mansion feels regal and is astonishingly well preserved. The wealth of period features: stained-glass, tiles, wood panelling, chandeliers, fireplaces and so on, are complemented by Angela Harper’s decoration, making liberal use of antiques, Zoffany and Sanderson wallpapers, paintings (including Snowdonia artist Rob Reen’s striking canvases of sheep) and collections of glass. Read expert review From £199per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gwynedd Gliffaes Country House HotelBrecon Beacons, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating What’s not to love? Down a rural track, Gliffaes reclines peacefully in 33-acre grounds in the shadow of the Black Mountains and on the edge of the River Usk. With antique dressers, floral drapes, retro Roberts radios, and carpets you can sink your toes into, the look is traditionally elegant, never twee. Excellent restaurant. Read expert review From £110per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Bodysgallen Hall and SpaLlandudno, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The medieval core of a fine 16th-century mansion, the tower was built as a lookout for Conwy Castle. The higher you climb, the older its spiralling staircase becomes: Victorian at the bottom, 13th-century at the top. The encircling view is enthralling. As you turn, first Conwy Castle, then Snowdonia, then the sea and Anglesey, then Great Orme, catching the golden light, and lastly Llandudno, with the promise of its marvellous 19th-century promenade, come into view. Read expert review From £185per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The most romantic hotels in Wales Llangoed HallPowys, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating The house itself, redesigned by Clough Williams-Ellis in 1912, has great presence. Later bought and restored by Sir Bernard Ashley, widower of Laura, family photographs, as well as his fine collection of early 20th-century British paintings, including a collection of prints by James McNeil Whistler abound. Guests are encouraged to relax, curl up on sofas and play the piano. Read expert review From £99per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales The GroveNarberth, Pembrokeshire, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is set in 26 acres of grounds amid deep countryside, with distant views of the Preseli Hills. The main building is a handsome three-storey residence with Georgian proportions and distinctive Arts and Crafts panelling and fireplaces. The lounges – cosy yet elegant, with real fires, window seats, plush sofas and modern prints and paintings of coastal Pembrokeshire – set the tone of the whole property. There are 26 rooms in total. Expect treats such as the softest of sheets, posh toiletries, thick towels and house-made biscotti. Read expert review From £145per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Scotland The Gleneagles HotelAuchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating Built in the 1920s as a railway resort hotel, the design is Scottish Baronial meets French chateau, with all the opulent comfort of a grand country house on steroids. (A dull-looking modern addition to one side is easily ignored). It’s so big you need the map provided when you arrive, but this five-star formality comes with a splendid sense of ease: time seems to slow from the moment the kilted doorman welcomes you to the hotel. Read expert review From £265per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Scotland Inverlochy Castle HotelFort William, Highlands, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating No bows to passing fashions here. Moving with the times means waterfall showers, Bang & Olufsen stereos and televisions, while the unashamedly country house style - all swags, gilt, silk and brocade, sparkling crystal, polished wood and an all-pervading sense of time suspended, remains. Nowhere else makes grandeur so cosy, combining Jacobite rose wallpaper, Venetian chandeliers and French Empire-style ceiling frescos with perfectly judged élan. Dinner begins with a drink by the fire in the Great Hall, followed by a delightfully light-handed five-course menu with a distinctly Highland accent. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • Top 10: the best Scottish castle hotels Isle of Eriska HotelArgyll & Bute, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating Calm and solitude are assured in a haven of herons and badgers, where the loudest sound is likely to be a fishing boat puttering over tranquil water. The trappings of Victorian wealth and privilege pervade drawing rooms filled with deep sofas, fireplaces and books in the imposing granite and red sandstone Big House. Elegant and comfortable without being stuffy, the ambiance is warm and welcoming, with soft, bright furnishings and piles of wellingtons by the front door of the oak-panelled hall. Carry on, Jeeves. Read expert review From £330per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels for spa breaks in Scotland Killiecrankie HotelPerth and Kinross, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating With direct access to the beautiful Pass of Killiecrankie, the deep river gorge formed by the River Garry, the whitewashed 1840s house has been a hotel since 1939. There are 10 pretty and homely rooms, with antique pieces, thick curtains and very comfortable beds. No two are the same: they are all shapes and sizes and some of the bathrooms are very small. You’ll find a vase of fresh flowers and the Egyptian cotton sheets will be turned down while you are at dinner. Read expert review From £220per night • Scotland hotels: the best places to stay on Scottish lochs The Roxburghe Hotel And Golf CourseKelso, Scottish Borders, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating The drawing room at The Roxburghe feels like a private house, with its family portraits and photographs, books and ornaments, and its welcoming groups of sofas and armchairs. Elsewhere there are tartan carpets, collections of whiskey and gin, plentiful open fires and the homely smell of woodsmoke. Bedrooms, some of which were designed by the Duchess of Roxburghe, are all different and decorated in traditional country house style. Three rooms have open fires, with coal and logs provided - the greatest luxury in a country hotel bedroom. Read expert review From £171per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

The best country house hotels in Britain

The British country house hotel was born in 1949, brought to us in the pink and frilly shape of Sharrow Bay, overlooking Ullswater in the Lake District. Presided over by a splendid couple, Francis Coulson and his partner Brian Sack, it came complete with a gargantuan afternoon tea, and Sack’s famous Icky Sticky Toffee Pudding and Coulson’s bedtime poems on the pillow. People adored it. There had been leisure hotels in Britain before, of course, but this was the first where you could be assured of being personally pampered in beautiful rural surroundings, with a committed owner at the helm offering a warm welcome, decent food, peace and quiet. Hundreds of characterful country house hotels have followed, and today there’s a bewildering amount from which to choose. Here we present the cream of the crop. While some continue to offer no more than the pleasures of a beautiful old house, a roaring fire and a cup of tea, others cater to our increased demands: for spas, cookery courses and activities such as foraging. All these hotels share in common comfort, excellent food and the joys of the English countryside. England Lime WoodNew Forest, Hampshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating It’s the attention to detail throughout Lime Wood that makes it special. The oak doors are thick and stylised sitting rooms melt one into the other, pale lemon into lilac into mint green, each with an open fire. As for the food, that most grounded of all celebrity chefs, Angela Hartnett, has joined forces with existing Lime Wood chef Luke Holder and to produce Italian inspired dishes that are as informal, yet polished as their surroundings. Read expert review From £245per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire • Find exclusive UK hotel and restaurant offers from Telegraph Travel Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'SaisonsOxfordshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The style is a happy marriage between stately Oxfordshire and eccentric French fancy. The honey-coloured Manor house creates an attractive focus around which an eclectic mix of 15th-century ponds, Provençal lavender rows, a Japanese garden, kitsch sculptures and a wild mushroom patch can all co-exist. Seasonality is king in its two-Michelin starred restaurant. A 1930s-style bar serves comforting cocktails and the wine cellar stocks a French dominated list of more than 1,000 different wines. Read expert review From £756per night • The best country house hotels in Britain Lympstone ManorExmouth, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Britain's most exciting new country house hotel in decades, with double-Michelin-starred BBC Great British Menu icon Michael Caines MBE at the helm. The man himself takes the time to greet guests and can often be spied striding through the halls in his white chef overalls. Don't miss the eight-course tasting menu dinner. Many chefs get bogged down in zany experiments with foams and moleculars. Michael prefers to bravely poke at the booby-trapped boundary between sumptuous and sickly. Book a room with an outdoor bath overlooking the golden syrup sunsets of the Exe estuary. Read expert review From £290per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com The best hotels in Oxfordshire Save up to 70% on hotel deals via our partner Secret Escapes ClivedenTaplow, Berkshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating This has to be one of the loveliest spots for a hotel, overlooking a spectacular 19th-century parterre and surrounded by acres of ancient woodland running down to the Thames. Contrary to its appearance, Cliveden is not in the least bit stuck up and doesn’t mind whether you turn up in a Ferrari or a Fiat. The house has witnessed much intrigue over the years – it was the setting for the infamous Profumo affair – and a hint of naughtiness remains. Read expert review From £340per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Berkshire Chewton Glen HotelNew Forest, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel has lovely grounds and guests can follow the stream through the woods to emerge at Naish Beach, with a view of the Needles rising from the sea. Facilities are legion: a lavish spa, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis centre, nine-hole golf course and many activities, from archery and buggy riding to duck herding. Bedrooms and suites, in many different styles, display astonishing attention to detail, down to the stamped postcards on each desk. Read expert review From £315per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire Hambleton HallRutland, East Midlands, England 9Telegraph expert rating Beautifully decorated by Stefa Hart, who with her husband Tim has owned and run Hambleton Hall since 1979, the house exudes a feeling of controlled and carefully orchestrated wellbeing without ever feeling unnatural or overly theatrical. The flowing country house good looks are matched by the surrounding gardens and the beautiful view of Rutland Water from the lovely flower filled terrace. The cooking of Aaron Patterson, who began here as a 16-year-old sous chef, easily deserves its long held Michelin star and is rooted in local and seasonal produce, charmingly presented and always delicious. Read expert review From £265per night • The best hotels in Rutland Gidleigh ParkChagford, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Perched atop a bank overlooking private woodlands traced by a boulder-strewn river, Gidleigh’s location is wild and dramatic. The décor is stylish if a little straight-laced, with everything you’d expect in an English country house hotel: antique furniture, wood panelling, stone fireplaces and elegant bouquets of flowers. The 24 bedrooms are decorated individually in a classic English country style, with supersized beds, roll-top baths, televisions, L’Occitane toiletries, spring water from the Gidleigh Estate, bowls of fresh fruit and complimentary decanters of Madeira. Read expert review From £248per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon Askham HallPenrith, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating A mixture of family furniture and paintings have been combined with more modern, or quirky pieces to create something both charming and unusual. The whole place feels part stately home, part private club, but mostly unique. Richard Swale is a gifted chef who draws his influences from, amongst others, Magnus Nilsson of Faviken restaurant in Sweden and Shaun Hill of the Walnut Tree, in Wales. Richard’s food is locally grown, or personally preserved and tastes correspondingly fresh and interesting. Read expert review From £150per night • The best hotels in Cumbria Calcot ManorTetbury, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating A weathered stone manor house and farm building that’s grown to house 35 guest rooms, a gorgeous spa, a function centre in a converted barn, an Ofsted-registered crèche in the kids’ Playzone and two restaurants. Double rooms are in the manor; family rooms overlook the outdoor pool. There’s something incredibly relaxing about this hotel, with 'country modern’ bedrooms that manage to be both cosy and elegant, soothing and spoiling, natural and sophisticated. When it was time to go home, we refused to leave, cancelled everything and booked for another night. It’s honestly that good. Read expert review From £204per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Augill CastleKirkby Stephen, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating Augill Castle stands in 20 acres of grounds in the beautiful upper Eden Valley, within striking distance of both the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. The owners have created a highly individual hotel with minimal rules, a great sense of relaxation and welcome to all – unusual and imaginative with a 'family friends’ feel. The 15 bedrooms are eclectic and slightly eccentric with a mix of antique and contemporary pieces and an array of unusual and pretty bedsteads. Dining is a social occasion. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Cumbria Summer Lodge Country House Hotel & SpaEvershot, Dorset, England 9Telegraph expert rating Decoration and style tends towards the feminine and the flouncy with fabric covered ceilings and padded fabric walls, pictures of dogs, plenty of cushions and so on but they add up, in general, to a feeling of spoiling indulgence and do not, mercifully, overwhelm. The drawing room, designed by the poet and author Thomas Hardy, is admirably classic in style, now painted a pretty blue, and the bedrooms are divinely pretty and comfortable. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Dorset Cowley ManorCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating One of the first of the new breed of contemporary country house hotels to put their spa, C-side, at the heart of their offering. The glass-fronted building is a beautiful piece of modern design, sunk into a hill to one side. The treatments in the four rooms use the hotel’s own Green & Spring products, employing local natural products. There are indoor and outdoor pools and a dedicated manicure and pedicure area, gym, steam room and sauna. Read expert review From £195per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gloucestershire Gilpin Hotel & Lake HouseLake Windermere, Lake District, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is a characterful Georgian house, built in 1901 and owned by three generations of the Cunliffe family. That’s not to say it’s a creaking relic — the décor is glamorous boutique meets country pile. Life at the Gilpin is all about kicking back — and that’s helped by the service, about which it’s hard to say anything negative. Everyone smiles, everyone says hello — yet it’s not overbearing. Fishing, shooting, horse riding, mountain biking, paintballing and treasure hunts can also be organised on-site. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Four Seasons Hotel HampshireWinchfield, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating Built in the 18th century as a manor house, the hotel is set amid 500 acres of green fields and paddocks full of grazing horses. Inside, it’s all slick and stylish, a blend of traditional and contemporary, as befits a metropolitan, cosmopolitan Four Seasons hotel set in English countryside. Bedrooms are sophisticated and elegant, traditional in style but with high-tech amenities and large marble bathrooms, and flexible sleeping options for families. The fine dining restaurant, Seasons, is very elegant, and there is a more casual bistro, a bar with open fire and library for afternoon tea. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire The Pig at CombeGittisham, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Sexy and fun as well as romantic. The 27 rooms are some of the most charming, traditional yet stylish (larders and minibars cleverly hidden inside antique cupboards; some televisions disguised as antique mirrors), comfortable, practical, quirky and soothing of any hotel bedrooms in the land. Head chef Dan Gavriilidis is responsible for the Devon version of the Pigs’ informal '25 Mile’ menu, featuring the produce of the kitchen gardens and poly tunnels and the best locally-sourced ingredients. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Mr & Mrs Smith • The best hotels in Devon Barnsley HouseCirencester, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating What a beauty. With its golden stone, gables and mullion windows this is a dreamily romantic house. But for all that, the building is magnificently upstaged by its garden. There are four acres of formal gardens including a knot garden and a potager. Cream furnishings in the rooms enhance engaging artworks, all based on the theme of nature – a row of bird houses; a chandelier cleverly created out of flower pots. Everything about the restaurant has been calibrated to convey a sense of pleasing simplicity – although of course that requires much painstaking effort. Read expert review From £181per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Ellenborough ParkCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating A group of honeystone buildings is set around a historic Cotswold manor house that was embellished with castle-like towers in the mid-19th century. The 61 generously sized bedrooms are a world away from the shabby-chic looks or the pared back minimalism that are now the norm in other rural retreats. With stripy wallpaper and sprucely comfy armchairs, and with swathes of linen chintz in some rooms, panelling in others, the interiors are a contemporary take on traditional British country style. Read expert review From £126per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Lucknam ParkWiltshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The hotel sits within a 500-acre estate that encompasses meadows, paddocks and woodland. The main building is a beautiful, symmetrical, creeper-covered Palladian mansion dating from 1720. Its public rooms are opulent and elegant, with a traditional country house feel. They include a panelled library, a drawing room with a corniced ceiling, an ornate fireplace as well as tassled curtains and sofas, and The Park Restaurant, laid out with white-clothed tables under a sky-painted ceiling. Read expert review From £230per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wiltshire Lords Of The ManorUpper Slaughter, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating The oldest parts of this mellow-stone manor house date from around 1649, with gables, wings and bay windows added in later centuries. Traditional rather than style-conscious, the public rooms are furnished with antiques. The 26 rooms in total split into five categories, comfortably furnished with embroidered silk throws on beds and soft lighting. The Michelin-starred restaurant is a key reason for staying at this hotel. The £69 three-course dinner menu may include starters of squab pigeon or foie gras with smoked eel and mains of Gloucestershire Old Spot suckling pig with rhubarb or local venison. Read expert review From £150per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Hotel EndsleighTavistock, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Built in 1812 as the holiday home for the Duchess of Bedford, Georgiana Russell, this wildly romantic, chintz-free country estate, run by Channel 5’s Hotel Inspector, Alex Polizzi, is steeped in royal history. It’s a verdantly gardened, Grade 1-listed Eden between Dartmoor and Exmoor, with shell houses and hidden glades for romantic tête-à-têtes. The cream teas are worth the journey alone: a help-yourself affair of just-baked scones accompanied by massive urns of clotted cream and fruit-laden strawberry jam. Breakfasts, too, are a cut above the rivals. Read expert review From £198per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon The House at BeaverbrookSurrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Step into a bygone era of English high society, original artworks and antiques at this luxurious country house hotel, where press baron Lord Beaverbrook entertained world leaders and literary greats. Grandeur and opulence ooze from every room, beautifully designed by Susie Atkinson: A cosy morning room with log fire and plump, squishy sofas offers stunning views of the North Downs and Italianate garden. The library's shelves heave with weighty tomes, and the UK's first home cinema, where Beaverbrook and Sir Winston Churchill discussed the war's progress, still has the original wood-panelling and lighting. Read expert review From £225per night • The best hotels in Surrey Bovey CastleMoretonhampstead, Dartmoor, England 9Telegraph expert rating This grand stately pile on a sporting estate in Dartmoor National Park caters for every whim, whether rugged outdoor pursuits or fine dining and pampering. Inside, there’s a heated swimming pool and whirlpool with deckchairs overlooking the grounds, plus steam room, sauna and gym, while the ESPA Spa offers an extensive range of treatments. Outside, in the 275-acre grounds, there’s an 18-hole championship golf course, tennis courts, a croquet pitch, archery and rifle range, putting green, helipad and beautiful lakeside walks to be had. Read expert review From £112per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels on Dartmoor Great FostersEgham, Surrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Italian gilt furniture, exquisite Flemish tapestries, elaborate Jacobean fireplaces and a one-Michelin-starred restaurant are the crowning glories of this luxury country-house hotel – once a 16th-century royal hunting lodge used by both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Oak paneling, beautifully-carved Jacobean fire-pieces plus a secret staircase – even 17th-century graffiti – await guests who enter the Grade I-listed building via a low wicket door. Traces of royal ancestry are everywhere, in Elizabeth’s coat of arms above the porch, and on the ceiling, dating from the 1500s and decorated with Queen Anne Boleyn’s personal crests. Read expert review From £122per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Surrey Wales Palé HallLlandderfel, Gwynedd, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating Complete with spire, porte-cochère and a grand entrance hall, hand stencilled by the owners, this mansion feels regal and is astonishingly well preserved. The wealth of period features: stained-glass, tiles, wood panelling, chandeliers, fireplaces and so on, are complemented by Angela Harper’s decoration, making liberal use of antiques, Zoffany and Sanderson wallpapers, paintings (including Snowdonia artist Rob Reen’s striking canvases of sheep) and collections of glass. Read expert review From £199per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gwynedd Gliffaes Country House HotelBrecon Beacons, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating What’s not to love? Down a rural track, Gliffaes reclines peacefully in 33-acre grounds in the shadow of the Black Mountains and on the edge of the River Usk. With antique dressers, floral drapes, retro Roberts radios, and carpets you can sink your toes into, the look is traditionally elegant, never twee. Excellent restaurant. Read expert review From £110per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Bodysgallen Hall and SpaLlandudno, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The medieval core of a fine 16th-century mansion, the tower was built as a lookout for Conwy Castle. The higher you climb, the older its spiralling staircase becomes: Victorian at the bottom, 13th-century at the top. The encircling view is enthralling. As you turn, first Conwy Castle, then Snowdonia, then the sea and Anglesey, then Great Orme, catching the golden light, and lastly Llandudno, with the promise of its marvellous 19th-century promenade, come into view. Read expert review From £185per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The most romantic hotels in Wales Llangoed HallPowys, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating The house itself, redesigned by Clough Williams-Ellis in 1912, has great presence. Later bought and restored by Sir Bernard Ashley, widower of Laura, family photographs, as well as his fine collection of early 20th-century British paintings, including a collection of prints by James McNeil Whistler abound. Guests are encouraged to relax, curl up on sofas and play the piano. Read expert review From £99per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales The GroveNarberth, Pembrokeshire, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is set in 26 acres of grounds amid deep countryside, with distant views of the Preseli Hills. The main building is a handsome three-storey residence with Georgian proportions and distinctive Arts and Crafts panelling and fireplaces. The lounges – cosy yet elegant, with real fires, window seats, plush sofas and modern prints and paintings of coastal Pembrokeshire – set the tone of the whole property. There are 26 rooms in total. Expect treats such as the softest of sheets, posh toiletries, thick towels and house-made biscotti. Read expert review From £145per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Scotland The Gleneagles HotelAuchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating Built in the 1920s as a railway resort hotel, the design is Scottish Baronial meets French chateau, with all the opulent comfort of a grand country house on steroids. (A dull-looking modern addition to one side is easily ignored). It’s so big you need the map provided when you arrive, but this five-star formality comes with a splendid sense of ease: time seems to slow from the moment the kilted doorman welcomes you to the hotel. Read expert review From £265per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Scotland Inverlochy Castle HotelFort William, Highlands, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating No bows to passing fashions here. Moving with the times means waterfall showers, Bang & Olufsen stereos and televisions, while the unashamedly country house style - all swags, gilt, silk and brocade, sparkling crystal, polished wood and an all-pervading sense of time suspended, remains. Nowhere else makes grandeur so cosy, combining Jacobite rose wallpaper, Venetian chandeliers and French Empire-style ceiling frescos with perfectly judged élan. Dinner begins with a drink by the fire in the Great Hall, followed by a delightfully light-handed five-course menu with a distinctly Highland accent. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • Top 10: the best Scottish castle hotels Isle of Eriska HotelArgyll & Bute, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating Calm and solitude are assured in a haven of herons and badgers, where the loudest sound is likely to be a fishing boat puttering over tranquil water. The trappings of Victorian wealth and privilege pervade drawing rooms filled with deep sofas, fireplaces and books in the imposing granite and red sandstone Big House. Elegant and comfortable without being stuffy, the ambiance is warm and welcoming, with soft, bright furnishings and piles of wellingtons by the front door of the oak-panelled hall. Carry on, Jeeves. Read expert review From £330per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels for spa breaks in Scotland Killiecrankie HotelPerth and Kinross, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating With direct access to the beautiful Pass of Killiecrankie, the deep river gorge formed by the River Garry, the whitewashed 1840s house has been a hotel since 1939. There are 10 pretty and homely rooms, with antique pieces, thick curtains and very comfortable beds. No two are the same: they are all shapes and sizes and some of the bathrooms are very small. You’ll find a vase of fresh flowers and the Egyptian cotton sheets will be turned down while you are at dinner. Read expert review From £220per night • Scotland hotels: the best places to stay on Scottish lochs The Roxburghe Hotel And Golf CourseKelso, Scottish Borders, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating The drawing room at The Roxburghe feels like a private house, with its family portraits and photographs, books and ornaments, and its welcoming groups of sofas and armchairs. Elsewhere there are tartan carpets, collections of whiskey and gin, plentiful open fires and the homely smell of woodsmoke. Bedrooms, some of which were designed by the Duchess of Roxburghe, are all different and decorated in traditional country house style. Three rooms have open fires, with coal and logs provided - the greatest luxury in a country hotel bedroom. Read expert review From £171per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

The best country house hotels in Britain

The British country house hotel was born in 1949, brought to us in the pink and frilly shape of Sharrow Bay, overlooking Ullswater in the Lake District. Presided over by a splendid couple, Francis Coulson and his partner Brian Sack, it came complete with a gargantuan afternoon tea, and Sack’s famous Icky Sticky Toffee Pudding and Coulson’s bedtime poems on the pillow. People adored it. There had been leisure hotels in Britain before, of course, but this was the first where you could be assured of being personally pampered in beautiful rural surroundings, with a committed owner at the helm offering a warm welcome, decent food, peace and quiet. Hundreds of characterful country house hotels have followed, and today there’s a bewildering amount from which to choose. Here we present the cream of the crop. While some continue to offer no more than the pleasures of a beautiful old house, a roaring fire and a cup of tea, others cater to our increased demands: for spas, cookery courses and activities such as foraging. All these hotels share in common comfort, excellent food and the joys of the English countryside. England Lime WoodNew Forest, Hampshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating It’s the attention to detail throughout Lime Wood that makes it special. The oak doors are thick and stylised sitting rooms melt one into the other, pale lemon into lilac into mint green, each with an open fire. As for the food, that most grounded of all celebrity chefs, Angela Hartnett, has joined forces with existing Lime Wood chef Luke Holder and to produce Italian inspired dishes that are as informal, yet polished as their surroundings. Read expert review From £245per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire • Find exclusive UK hotel and restaurant offers from Telegraph Travel Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'SaisonsOxfordshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The style is a happy marriage between stately Oxfordshire and eccentric French fancy. The honey-coloured Manor house creates an attractive focus around which an eclectic mix of 15th-century ponds, Provençal lavender rows, a Japanese garden, kitsch sculptures and a wild mushroom patch can all co-exist. Seasonality is king in its two-Michelin starred restaurant. A 1930s-style bar serves comforting cocktails and the wine cellar stocks a French dominated list of more than 1,000 different wines. Read expert review From £756per night • The best country house hotels in Britain Lympstone ManorExmouth, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Britain's most exciting new country house hotel in decades, with double-Michelin-starred BBC Great British Menu icon Michael Caines MBE at the helm. The man himself takes the time to greet guests and can often be spied striding through the halls in his white chef overalls. Don't miss the eight-course tasting menu dinner. Many chefs get bogged down in zany experiments with foams and moleculars. Michael prefers to bravely poke at the booby-trapped boundary between sumptuous and sickly. Book a room with an outdoor bath overlooking the golden syrup sunsets of the Exe estuary. Read expert review From £290per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com The best hotels in Oxfordshire Save up to 70% on hotel deals via our partner Secret Escapes ClivedenTaplow, Berkshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating This has to be one of the loveliest spots for a hotel, overlooking a spectacular 19th-century parterre and surrounded by acres of ancient woodland running down to the Thames. Contrary to its appearance, Cliveden is not in the least bit stuck up and doesn’t mind whether you turn up in a Ferrari or a Fiat. The house has witnessed much intrigue over the years – it was the setting for the infamous Profumo affair – and a hint of naughtiness remains. Read expert review From £340per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Berkshire Chewton Glen HotelNew Forest, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel has lovely grounds and guests can follow the stream through the woods to emerge at Naish Beach, with a view of the Needles rising from the sea. Facilities are legion: a lavish spa, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis centre, nine-hole golf course and many activities, from archery and buggy riding to duck herding. Bedrooms and suites, in many different styles, display astonishing attention to detail, down to the stamped postcards on each desk. Read expert review From £315per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire Hambleton HallRutland, East Midlands, England 9Telegraph expert rating Beautifully decorated by Stefa Hart, who with her husband Tim has owned and run Hambleton Hall since 1979, the house exudes a feeling of controlled and carefully orchestrated wellbeing without ever feeling unnatural or overly theatrical. The flowing country house good looks are matched by the surrounding gardens and the beautiful view of Rutland Water from the lovely flower filled terrace. The cooking of Aaron Patterson, who began here as a 16-year-old sous chef, easily deserves its long held Michelin star and is rooted in local and seasonal produce, charmingly presented and always delicious. Read expert review From £265per night • The best hotels in Rutland Gidleigh ParkChagford, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Perched atop a bank overlooking private woodlands traced by a boulder-strewn river, Gidleigh’s location is wild and dramatic. The décor is stylish if a little straight-laced, with everything you’d expect in an English country house hotel: antique furniture, wood panelling, stone fireplaces and elegant bouquets of flowers. The 24 bedrooms are decorated individually in a classic English country style, with supersized beds, roll-top baths, televisions, L’Occitane toiletries, spring water from the Gidleigh Estate, bowls of fresh fruit and complimentary decanters of Madeira. Read expert review From £248per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon Askham HallPenrith, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating A mixture of family furniture and paintings have been combined with more modern, or quirky pieces to create something both charming and unusual. The whole place feels part stately home, part private club, but mostly unique. Richard Swale is a gifted chef who draws his influences from, amongst others, Magnus Nilsson of Faviken restaurant in Sweden and Shaun Hill of the Walnut Tree, in Wales. Richard’s food is locally grown, or personally preserved and tastes correspondingly fresh and interesting. Read expert review From £150per night • The best hotels in Cumbria Calcot ManorTetbury, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating A weathered stone manor house and farm building that’s grown to house 35 guest rooms, a gorgeous spa, a function centre in a converted barn, an Ofsted-registered crèche in the kids’ Playzone and two restaurants. Double rooms are in the manor; family rooms overlook the outdoor pool. There’s something incredibly relaxing about this hotel, with 'country modern’ bedrooms that manage to be both cosy and elegant, soothing and spoiling, natural and sophisticated. When it was time to go home, we refused to leave, cancelled everything and booked for another night. It’s honestly that good. Read expert review From £204per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Augill CastleKirkby Stephen, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating Augill Castle stands in 20 acres of grounds in the beautiful upper Eden Valley, within striking distance of both the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. The owners have created a highly individual hotel with minimal rules, a great sense of relaxation and welcome to all – unusual and imaginative with a 'family friends’ feel. The 15 bedrooms are eclectic and slightly eccentric with a mix of antique and contemporary pieces and an array of unusual and pretty bedsteads. Dining is a social occasion. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Cumbria Summer Lodge Country House Hotel & SpaEvershot, Dorset, England 9Telegraph expert rating Decoration and style tends towards the feminine and the flouncy with fabric covered ceilings and padded fabric walls, pictures of dogs, plenty of cushions and so on but they add up, in general, to a feeling of spoiling indulgence and do not, mercifully, overwhelm. The drawing room, designed by the poet and author Thomas Hardy, is admirably classic in style, now painted a pretty blue, and the bedrooms are divinely pretty and comfortable. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Dorset Cowley ManorCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating One of the first of the new breed of contemporary country house hotels to put their spa, C-side, at the heart of their offering. The glass-fronted building is a beautiful piece of modern design, sunk into a hill to one side. The treatments in the four rooms use the hotel’s own Green & Spring products, employing local natural products. There are indoor and outdoor pools and a dedicated manicure and pedicure area, gym, steam room and sauna. Read expert review From £195per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gloucestershire Gilpin Hotel & Lake HouseLake Windermere, Lake District, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is a characterful Georgian house, built in 1901 and owned by three generations of the Cunliffe family. That’s not to say it’s a creaking relic — the décor is glamorous boutique meets country pile. Life at the Gilpin is all about kicking back — and that’s helped by the service, about which it’s hard to say anything negative. Everyone smiles, everyone says hello — yet it’s not overbearing. Fishing, shooting, horse riding, mountain biking, paintballing and treasure hunts can also be organised on-site. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Four Seasons Hotel HampshireWinchfield, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating Built in the 18th century as a manor house, the hotel is set amid 500 acres of green fields and paddocks full of grazing horses. Inside, it’s all slick and stylish, a blend of traditional and contemporary, as befits a metropolitan, cosmopolitan Four Seasons hotel set in English countryside. Bedrooms are sophisticated and elegant, traditional in style but with high-tech amenities and large marble bathrooms, and flexible sleeping options for families. The fine dining restaurant, Seasons, is very elegant, and there is a more casual bistro, a bar with open fire and library for afternoon tea. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire The Pig at CombeGittisham, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Sexy and fun as well as romantic. The 27 rooms are some of the most charming, traditional yet stylish (larders and minibars cleverly hidden inside antique cupboards; some televisions disguised as antique mirrors), comfortable, practical, quirky and soothing of any hotel bedrooms in the land. Head chef Dan Gavriilidis is responsible for the Devon version of the Pigs’ informal '25 Mile’ menu, featuring the produce of the kitchen gardens and poly tunnels and the best locally-sourced ingredients. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Mr & Mrs Smith • The best hotels in Devon Barnsley HouseCirencester, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating What a beauty. With its golden stone, gables and mullion windows this is a dreamily romantic house. But for all that, the building is magnificently upstaged by its garden. There are four acres of formal gardens including a knot garden and a potager. Cream furnishings in the rooms enhance engaging artworks, all based on the theme of nature – a row of bird houses; a chandelier cleverly created out of flower pots. Everything about the restaurant has been calibrated to convey a sense of pleasing simplicity – although of course that requires much painstaking effort. Read expert review From £181per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Ellenborough ParkCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating A group of honeystone buildings is set around a historic Cotswold manor house that was embellished with castle-like towers in the mid-19th century. The 61 generously sized bedrooms are a world away from the shabby-chic looks or the pared back minimalism that are now the norm in other rural retreats. With stripy wallpaper and sprucely comfy armchairs, and with swathes of linen chintz in some rooms, panelling in others, the interiors are a contemporary take on traditional British country style. Read expert review From £126per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Lucknam ParkWiltshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The hotel sits within a 500-acre estate that encompasses meadows, paddocks and woodland. The main building is a beautiful, symmetrical, creeper-covered Palladian mansion dating from 1720. Its public rooms are opulent and elegant, with a traditional country house feel. They include a panelled library, a drawing room with a corniced ceiling, an ornate fireplace as well as tassled curtains and sofas, and The Park Restaurant, laid out with white-clothed tables under a sky-painted ceiling. Read expert review From £230per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wiltshire Lords Of The ManorUpper Slaughter, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating The oldest parts of this mellow-stone manor house date from around 1649, with gables, wings and bay windows added in later centuries. Traditional rather than style-conscious, the public rooms are furnished with antiques. The 26 rooms in total split into five categories, comfortably furnished with embroidered silk throws on beds and soft lighting. The Michelin-starred restaurant is a key reason for staying at this hotel. The £69 three-course dinner menu may include starters of squab pigeon or foie gras with smoked eel and mains of Gloucestershire Old Spot suckling pig with rhubarb or local venison. Read expert review From £150per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Hotel EndsleighTavistock, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Built in 1812 as the holiday home for the Duchess of Bedford, Georgiana Russell, this wildly romantic, chintz-free country estate, run by Channel 5’s Hotel Inspector, Alex Polizzi, is steeped in royal history. It’s a verdantly gardened, Grade 1-listed Eden between Dartmoor and Exmoor, with shell houses and hidden glades for romantic tête-à-têtes. The cream teas are worth the journey alone: a help-yourself affair of just-baked scones accompanied by massive urns of clotted cream and fruit-laden strawberry jam. Breakfasts, too, are a cut above the rivals. Read expert review From £198per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon The House at BeaverbrookSurrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Step into a bygone era of English high society, original artworks and antiques at this luxurious country house hotel, where press baron Lord Beaverbrook entertained world leaders and literary greats. Grandeur and opulence ooze from every room, beautifully designed by Susie Atkinson: A cosy morning room with log fire and plump, squishy sofas offers stunning views of the North Downs and Italianate garden. The library's shelves heave with weighty tomes, and the UK's first home cinema, where Beaverbrook and Sir Winston Churchill discussed the war's progress, still has the original wood-panelling and lighting. Read expert review From £225per night • The best hotels in Surrey Bovey CastleMoretonhampstead, Dartmoor, England 9Telegraph expert rating This grand stately pile on a sporting estate in Dartmoor National Park caters for every whim, whether rugged outdoor pursuits or fine dining and pampering. Inside, there’s a heated swimming pool and whirlpool with deckchairs overlooking the grounds, plus steam room, sauna and gym, while the ESPA Spa offers an extensive range of treatments. Outside, in the 275-acre grounds, there’s an 18-hole championship golf course, tennis courts, a croquet pitch, archery and rifle range, putting green, helipad and beautiful lakeside walks to be had. Read expert review From £112per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels on Dartmoor Great FostersEgham, Surrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Italian gilt furniture, exquisite Flemish tapestries, elaborate Jacobean fireplaces and a one-Michelin-starred restaurant are the crowning glories of this luxury country-house hotel – once a 16th-century royal hunting lodge used by both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Oak paneling, beautifully-carved Jacobean fire-pieces plus a secret staircase – even 17th-century graffiti – await guests who enter the Grade I-listed building via a low wicket door. Traces of royal ancestry are everywhere, in Elizabeth’s coat of arms above the porch, and on the ceiling, dating from the 1500s and decorated with Queen Anne Boleyn’s personal crests. Read expert review From £122per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Surrey Wales Palé HallLlandderfel, Gwynedd, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating Complete with spire, porte-cochère and a grand entrance hall, hand stencilled by the owners, this mansion feels regal and is astonishingly well preserved. The wealth of period features: stained-glass, tiles, wood panelling, chandeliers, fireplaces and so on, are complemented by Angela Harper’s decoration, making liberal use of antiques, Zoffany and Sanderson wallpapers, paintings (including Snowdonia artist Rob Reen’s striking canvases of sheep) and collections of glass. Read expert review From £199per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gwynedd Gliffaes Country House HotelBrecon Beacons, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating What’s not to love? Down a rural track, Gliffaes reclines peacefully in 33-acre grounds in the shadow of the Black Mountains and on the edge of the River Usk. With antique dressers, floral drapes, retro Roberts radios, and carpets you can sink your toes into, the look is traditionally elegant, never twee. Excellent restaurant. Read expert review From £110per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Bodysgallen Hall and SpaLlandudno, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The medieval core of a fine 16th-century mansion, the tower was built as a lookout for Conwy Castle. The higher you climb, the older its spiralling staircase becomes: Victorian at the bottom, 13th-century at the top. The encircling view is enthralling. As you turn, first Conwy Castle, then Snowdonia, then the sea and Anglesey, then Great Orme, catching the golden light, and lastly Llandudno, with the promise of its marvellous 19th-century promenade, come into view. Read expert review From £185per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The most romantic hotels in Wales Llangoed HallPowys, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating The house itself, redesigned by Clough Williams-Ellis in 1912, has great presence. Later bought and restored by Sir Bernard Ashley, widower of Laura, family photographs, as well as his fine collection of early 20th-century British paintings, including a collection of prints by James McNeil Whistler abound. Guests are encouraged to relax, curl up on sofas and play the piano. Read expert review From £99per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales The GroveNarberth, Pembrokeshire, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is set in 26 acres of grounds amid deep countryside, with distant views of the Preseli Hills. The main building is a handsome three-storey residence with Georgian proportions and distinctive Arts and Crafts panelling and fireplaces. The lounges – cosy yet elegant, with real fires, window seats, plush sofas and modern prints and paintings of coastal Pembrokeshire – set the tone of the whole property. There are 26 rooms in total. Expect treats such as the softest of sheets, posh toiletries, thick towels and house-made biscotti. Read expert review From £145per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Scotland The Gleneagles HotelAuchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating Built in the 1920s as a railway resort hotel, the design is Scottish Baronial meets French chateau, with all the opulent comfort of a grand country house on steroids. (A dull-looking modern addition to one side is easily ignored). It’s so big you need the map provided when you arrive, but this five-star formality comes with a splendid sense of ease: time seems to slow from the moment the kilted doorman welcomes you to the hotel. Read expert review From £265per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Scotland Inverlochy Castle HotelFort William, Highlands, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating No bows to passing fashions here. Moving with the times means waterfall showers, Bang & Olufsen stereos and televisions, while the unashamedly country house style - all swags, gilt, silk and brocade, sparkling crystal, polished wood and an all-pervading sense of time suspended, remains. Nowhere else makes grandeur so cosy, combining Jacobite rose wallpaper, Venetian chandeliers and French Empire-style ceiling frescos with perfectly judged élan. Dinner begins with a drink by the fire in the Great Hall, followed by a delightfully light-handed five-course menu with a distinctly Highland accent. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • Top 10: the best Scottish castle hotels Isle of Eriska HotelArgyll & Bute, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating Calm and solitude are assured in a haven of herons and badgers, where the loudest sound is likely to be a fishing boat puttering over tranquil water. The trappings of Victorian wealth and privilege pervade drawing rooms filled with deep sofas, fireplaces and books in the imposing granite and red sandstone Big House. Elegant and comfortable without being stuffy, the ambiance is warm and welcoming, with soft, bright furnishings and piles of wellingtons by the front door of the oak-panelled hall. Carry on, Jeeves. Read expert review From £330per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels for spa breaks in Scotland Killiecrankie HotelPerth and Kinross, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating With direct access to the beautiful Pass of Killiecrankie, the deep river gorge formed by the River Garry, the whitewashed 1840s house has been a hotel since 1939. There are 10 pretty and homely rooms, with antique pieces, thick curtains and very comfortable beds. No two are the same: they are all shapes and sizes and some of the bathrooms are very small. You’ll find a vase of fresh flowers and the Egyptian cotton sheets will be turned down while you are at dinner. Read expert review From £220per night • Scotland hotels: the best places to stay on Scottish lochs The Roxburghe Hotel And Golf CourseKelso, Scottish Borders, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating The drawing room at The Roxburghe feels like a private house, with its family portraits and photographs, books and ornaments, and its welcoming groups of sofas and armchairs. Elsewhere there are tartan carpets, collections of whiskey and gin, plentiful open fires and the homely smell of woodsmoke. Bedrooms, some of which were designed by the Duchess of Roxburghe, are all different and decorated in traditional country house style. Three rooms have open fires, with coal and logs provided - the greatest luxury in a country hotel bedroom. Read expert review From £171per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

The best country house hotels in Britain

The British country house hotel was born in 1949, brought to us in the pink and frilly shape of Sharrow Bay, overlooking Ullswater in the Lake District. Presided over by a splendid couple, Francis Coulson and his partner Brian Sack, it came complete with a gargantuan afternoon tea, and Sack’s famous Icky Sticky Toffee Pudding and Coulson’s bedtime poems on the pillow. People adored it. There had been leisure hotels in Britain before, of course, but this was the first where you could be assured of being personally pampered in beautiful rural surroundings, with a committed owner at the helm offering a warm welcome, decent food, peace and quiet. Hundreds of characterful country house hotels have followed, and today there’s a bewildering amount from which to choose. Here we present the cream of the crop. While some continue to offer no more than the pleasures of a beautiful old house, a roaring fire and a cup of tea, others cater to our increased demands: for spas, cookery courses and activities such as foraging. All these hotels share in common comfort, excellent food and the joys of the English countryside. England Lime WoodNew Forest, Hampshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating It’s the attention to detail throughout Lime Wood that makes it special. The oak doors are thick and stylised sitting rooms melt one into the other, pale lemon into lilac into mint green, each with an open fire. As for the food, that most grounded of all celebrity chefs, Angela Hartnett, has joined forces with existing Lime Wood chef Luke Holder and to produce Italian inspired dishes that are as informal, yet polished as their surroundings. Read expert review From £245per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire • Find exclusive UK hotel and restaurant offers from Telegraph Travel Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'SaisonsOxfordshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The style is a happy marriage between stately Oxfordshire and eccentric French fancy. The honey-coloured Manor house creates an attractive focus around which an eclectic mix of 15th-century ponds, Provençal lavender rows, a Japanese garden, kitsch sculptures and a wild mushroom patch can all co-exist. Seasonality is king in its two-Michelin starred restaurant. A 1930s-style bar serves comforting cocktails and the wine cellar stocks a French dominated list of more than 1,000 different wines. Read expert review From £756per night • The best country house hotels in Britain Lympstone ManorExmouth, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Britain's most exciting new country house hotel in decades, with double-Michelin-starred BBC Great British Menu icon Michael Caines MBE at the helm. The man himself takes the time to greet guests and can often be spied striding through the halls in his white chef overalls. Don't miss the eight-course tasting menu dinner. Many chefs get bogged down in zany experiments with foams and moleculars. Michael prefers to bravely poke at the booby-trapped boundary between sumptuous and sickly. Book a room with an outdoor bath overlooking the golden syrup sunsets of the Exe estuary. Read expert review From £290per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com The best hotels in Oxfordshire Save up to 70% on hotel deals via our partner Secret Escapes ClivedenTaplow, Berkshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating This has to be one of the loveliest spots for a hotel, overlooking a spectacular 19th-century parterre and surrounded by acres of ancient woodland running down to the Thames. Contrary to its appearance, Cliveden is not in the least bit stuck up and doesn’t mind whether you turn up in a Ferrari or a Fiat. The house has witnessed much intrigue over the years – it was the setting for the infamous Profumo affair – and a hint of naughtiness remains. Read expert review From £340per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Berkshire Chewton Glen HotelNew Forest, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel has lovely grounds and guests can follow the stream through the woods to emerge at Naish Beach, with a view of the Needles rising from the sea. Facilities are legion: a lavish spa, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis centre, nine-hole golf course and many activities, from archery and buggy riding to duck herding. Bedrooms and suites, in many different styles, display astonishing attention to detail, down to the stamped postcards on each desk. Read expert review From £315per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire Hambleton HallRutland, East Midlands, England 9Telegraph expert rating Beautifully decorated by Stefa Hart, who with her husband Tim has owned and run Hambleton Hall since 1979, the house exudes a feeling of controlled and carefully orchestrated wellbeing without ever feeling unnatural or overly theatrical. The flowing country house good looks are matched by the surrounding gardens and the beautiful view of Rutland Water from the lovely flower filled terrace. The cooking of Aaron Patterson, who began here as a 16-year-old sous chef, easily deserves its long held Michelin star and is rooted in local and seasonal produce, charmingly presented and always delicious. Read expert review From £265per night • The best hotels in Rutland Gidleigh ParkChagford, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Perched atop a bank overlooking private woodlands traced by a boulder-strewn river, Gidleigh’s location is wild and dramatic. The décor is stylish if a little straight-laced, with everything you’d expect in an English country house hotel: antique furniture, wood panelling, stone fireplaces and elegant bouquets of flowers. The 24 bedrooms are decorated individually in a classic English country style, with supersized beds, roll-top baths, televisions, L’Occitane toiletries, spring water from the Gidleigh Estate, bowls of fresh fruit and complimentary decanters of Madeira. Read expert review From £248per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon Askham HallPenrith, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating A mixture of family furniture and paintings have been combined with more modern, or quirky pieces to create something both charming and unusual. The whole place feels part stately home, part private club, but mostly unique. Richard Swale is a gifted chef who draws his influences from, amongst others, Magnus Nilsson of Faviken restaurant in Sweden and Shaun Hill of the Walnut Tree, in Wales. Richard’s food is locally grown, or personally preserved and tastes correspondingly fresh and interesting. Read expert review From £150per night • The best hotels in Cumbria Calcot ManorTetbury, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating A weathered stone manor house and farm building that’s grown to house 35 guest rooms, a gorgeous spa, a function centre in a converted barn, an Ofsted-registered crèche in the kids’ Playzone and two restaurants. Double rooms are in the manor; family rooms overlook the outdoor pool. There’s something incredibly relaxing about this hotel, with 'country modern’ bedrooms that manage to be both cosy and elegant, soothing and spoiling, natural and sophisticated. When it was time to go home, we refused to leave, cancelled everything and booked for another night. It’s honestly that good. Read expert review From £204per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Augill CastleKirkby Stephen, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating Augill Castle stands in 20 acres of grounds in the beautiful upper Eden Valley, within striking distance of both the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. The owners have created a highly individual hotel with minimal rules, a great sense of relaxation and welcome to all – unusual and imaginative with a 'family friends’ feel. The 15 bedrooms are eclectic and slightly eccentric with a mix of antique and contemporary pieces and an array of unusual and pretty bedsteads. Dining is a social occasion. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Cumbria Summer Lodge Country House Hotel & SpaEvershot, Dorset, England 9Telegraph expert rating Decoration and style tends towards the feminine and the flouncy with fabric covered ceilings and padded fabric walls, pictures of dogs, plenty of cushions and so on but they add up, in general, to a feeling of spoiling indulgence and do not, mercifully, overwhelm. The drawing room, designed by the poet and author Thomas Hardy, is admirably classic in style, now painted a pretty blue, and the bedrooms are divinely pretty and comfortable. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Dorset Cowley ManorCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating One of the first of the new breed of contemporary country house hotels to put their spa, C-side, at the heart of their offering. The glass-fronted building is a beautiful piece of modern design, sunk into a hill to one side. The treatments in the four rooms use the hotel’s own Green & Spring products, employing local natural products. There are indoor and outdoor pools and a dedicated manicure and pedicure area, gym, steam room and sauna. Read expert review From £195per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gloucestershire Gilpin Hotel & Lake HouseLake Windermere, Lake District, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is a characterful Georgian house, built in 1901 and owned by three generations of the Cunliffe family. That’s not to say it’s a creaking relic — the décor is glamorous boutique meets country pile. Life at the Gilpin is all about kicking back — and that’s helped by the service, about which it’s hard to say anything negative. Everyone smiles, everyone says hello — yet it’s not overbearing. Fishing, shooting, horse riding, mountain biking, paintballing and treasure hunts can also be organised on-site. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Four Seasons Hotel HampshireWinchfield, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating Built in the 18th century as a manor house, the hotel is set amid 500 acres of green fields and paddocks full of grazing horses. Inside, it’s all slick and stylish, a blend of traditional and contemporary, as befits a metropolitan, cosmopolitan Four Seasons hotel set in English countryside. Bedrooms are sophisticated and elegant, traditional in style but with high-tech amenities and large marble bathrooms, and flexible sleeping options for families. The fine dining restaurant, Seasons, is very elegant, and there is a more casual bistro, a bar with open fire and library for afternoon tea. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire The Pig at CombeGittisham, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Sexy and fun as well as romantic. The 27 rooms are some of the most charming, traditional yet stylish (larders and minibars cleverly hidden inside antique cupboards; some televisions disguised as antique mirrors), comfortable, practical, quirky and soothing of any hotel bedrooms in the land. Head chef Dan Gavriilidis is responsible for the Devon version of the Pigs’ informal '25 Mile’ menu, featuring the produce of the kitchen gardens and poly tunnels and the best locally-sourced ingredients. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Mr & Mrs Smith • The best hotels in Devon Barnsley HouseCirencester, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating What a beauty. With its golden stone, gables and mullion windows this is a dreamily romantic house. But for all that, the building is magnificently upstaged by its garden. There are four acres of formal gardens including a knot garden and a potager. Cream furnishings in the rooms enhance engaging artworks, all based on the theme of nature – a row of bird houses; a chandelier cleverly created out of flower pots. Everything about the restaurant has been calibrated to convey a sense of pleasing simplicity – although of course that requires much painstaking effort. Read expert review From £181per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Ellenborough ParkCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating A group of honeystone buildings is set around a historic Cotswold manor house that was embellished with castle-like towers in the mid-19th century. The 61 generously sized bedrooms are a world away from the shabby-chic looks or the pared back minimalism that are now the norm in other rural retreats. With stripy wallpaper and sprucely comfy armchairs, and with swathes of linen chintz in some rooms, panelling in others, the interiors are a contemporary take on traditional British country style. Read expert review From £126per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Lucknam ParkWiltshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The hotel sits within a 500-acre estate that encompasses meadows, paddocks and woodland. The main building is a beautiful, symmetrical, creeper-covered Palladian mansion dating from 1720. Its public rooms are opulent and elegant, with a traditional country house feel. They include a panelled library, a drawing room with a corniced ceiling, an ornate fireplace as well as tassled curtains and sofas, and The Park Restaurant, laid out with white-clothed tables under a sky-painted ceiling. Read expert review From £230per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wiltshire Lords Of The ManorUpper Slaughter, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating The oldest parts of this mellow-stone manor house date from around 1649, with gables, wings and bay windows added in later centuries. Traditional rather than style-conscious, the public rooms are furnished with antiques. The 26 rooms in total split into five categories, comfortably furnished with embroidered silk throws on beds and soft lighting. The Michelin-starred restaurant is a key reason for staying at this hotel. The £69 three-course dinner menu may include starters of squab pigeon or foie gras with smoked eel and mains of Gloucestershire Old Spot suckling pig with rhubarb or local venison. Read expert review From £150per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Hotel EndsleighTavistock, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Built in 1812 as the holiday home for the Duchess of Bedford, Georgiana Russell, this wildly romantic, chintz-free country estate, run by Channel 5’s Hotel Inspector, Alex Polizzi, is steeped in royal history. It’s a verdantly gardened, Grade 1-listed Eden between Dartmoor and Exmoor, with shell houses and hidden glades for romantic tête-à-têtes. The cream teas are worth the journey alone: a help-yourself affair of just-baked scones accompanied by massive urns of clotted cream and fruit-laden strawberry jam. Breakfasts, too, are a cut above the rivals. Read expert review From £198per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon The House at BeaverbrookSurrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Step into a bygone era of English high society, original artworks and antiques at this luxurious country house hotel, where press baron Lord Beaverbrook entertained world leaders and literary greats. Grandeur and opulence ooze from every room, beautifully designed by Susie Atkinson: A cosy morning room with log fire and plump, squishy sofas offers stunning views of the North Downs and Italianate garden. The library's shelves heave with weighty tomes, and the UK's first home cinema, where Beaverbrook and Sir Winston Churchill discussed the war's progress, still has the original wood-panelling and lighting. Read expert review From £225per night • The best hotels in Surrey Bovey CastleMoretonhampstead, Dartmoor, England 9Telegraph expert rating This grand stately pile on a sporting estate in Dartmoor National Park caters for every whim, whether rugged outdoor pursuits or fine dining and pampering. Inside, there’s a heated swimming pool and whirlpool with deckchairs overlooking the grounds, plus steam room, sauna and gym, while the ESPA Spa offers an extensive range of treatments. Outside, in the 275-acre grounds, there’s an 18-hole championship golf course, tennis courts, a croquet pitch, archery and rifle range, putting green, helipad and beautiful lakeside walks to be had. Read expert review From £112per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels on Dartmoor Great FostersEgham, Surrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Italian gilt furniture, exquisite Flemish tapestries, elaborate Jacobean fireplaces and a one-Michelin-starred restaurant are the crowning glories of this luxury country-house hotel – once a 16th-century royal hunting lodge used by both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Oak paneling, beautifully-carved Jacobean fire-pieces plus a secret staircase – even 17th-century graffiti – await guests who enter the Grade I-listed building via a low wicket door. Traces of royal ancestry are everywhere, in Elizabeth’s coat of arms above the porch, and on the ceiling, dating from the 1500s and decorated with Queen Anne Boleyn’s personal crests. Read expert review From £122per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Surrey Wales Palé HallLlandderfel, Gwynedd, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating Complete with spire, porte-cochère and a grand entrance hall, hand stencilled by the owners, this mansion feels regal and is astonishingly well preserved. The wealth of period features: stained-glass, tiles, wood panelling, chandeliers, fireplaces and so on, are complemented by Angela Harper’s decoration, making liberal use of antiques, Zoffany and Sanderson wallpapers, paintings (including Snowdonia artist Rob Reen’s striking canvases of sheep) and collections of glass. Read expert review From £199per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gwynedd Gliffaes Country House HotelBrecon Beacons, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating What’s not to love? Down a rural track, Gliffaes reclines peacefully in 33-acre grounds in the shadow of the Black Mountains and on the edge of the River Usk. With antique dressers, floral drapes, retro Roberts radios, and carpets you can sink your toes into, the look is traditionally elegant, never twee. Excellent restaurant. Read expert review From £110per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Bodysgallen Hall and SpaLlandudno, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The medieval core of a fine 16th-century mansion, the tower was built as a lookout for Conwy Castle. The higher you climb, the older its spiralling staircase becomes: Victorian at the bottom, 13th-century at the top. The encircling view is enthralling. As you turn, first Conwy Castle, then Snowdonia, then the sea and Anglesey, then Great Orme, catching the golden light, and lastly Llandudno, with the promise of its marvellous 19th-century promenade, come into view. Read expert review From £185per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The most romantic hotels in Wales Llangoed HallPowys, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating The house itself, redesigned by Clough Williams-Ellis in 1912, has great presence. Later bought and restored by Sir Bernard Ashley, widower of Laura, family photographs, as well as his fine collection of early 20th-century British paintings, including a collection of prints by James McNeil Whistler abound. Guests are encouraged to relax, curl up on sofas and play the piano. Read expert review From £99per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales The GroveNarberth, Pembrokeshire, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is set in 26 acres of grounds amid deep countryside, with distant views of the Preseli Hills. The main building is a handsome three-storey residence with Georgian proportions and distinctive Arts and Crafts panelling and fireplaces. The lounges – cosy yet elegant, with real fires, window seats, plush sofas and modern prints and paintings of coastal Pembrokeshire – set the tone of the whole property. There are 26 rooms in total. Expect treats such as the softest of sheets, posh toiletries, thick towels and house-made biscotti. Read expert review From £145per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Scotland The Gleneagles HotelAuchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating Built in the 1920s as a railway resort hotel, the design is Scottish Baronial meets French chateau, with all the opulent comfort of a grand country house on steroids. (A dull-looking modern addition to one side is easily ignored). It’s so big you need the map provided when you arrive, but this five-star formality comes with a splendid sense of ease: time seems to slow from the moment the kilted doorman welcomes you to the hotel. Read expert review From £265per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Scotland Inverlochy Castle HotelFort William, Highlands, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating No bows to passing fashions here. Moving with the times means waterfall showers, Bang & Olufsen stereos and televisions, while the unashamedly country house style - all swags, gilt, silk and brocade, sparkling crystal, polished wood and an all-pervading sense of time suspended, remains. Nowhere else makes grandeur so cosy, combining Jacobite rose wallpaper, Venetian chandeliers and French Empire-style ceiling frescos with perfectly judged élan. Dinner begins with a drink by the fire in the Great Hall, followed by a delightfully light-handed five-course menu with a distinctly Highland accent. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • Top 10: the best Scottish castle hotels Isle of Eriska HotelArgyll & Bute, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating Calm and solitude are assured in a haven of herons and badgers, where the loudest sound is likely to be a fishing boat puttering over tranquil water. The trappings of Victorian wealth and privilege pervade drawing rooms filled with deep sofas, fireplaces and books in the imposing granite and red sandstone Big House. Elegant and comfortable without being stuffy, the ambiance is warm and welcoming, with soft, bright furnishings and piles of wellingtons by the front door of the oak-panelled hall. Carry on, Jeeves. Read expert review From £330per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels for spa breaks in Scotland Killiecrankie HotelPerth and Kinross, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating With direct access to the beautiful Pass of Killiecrankie, the deep river gorge formed by the River Garry, the whitewashed 1840s house has been a hotel since 1939. There are 10 pretty and homely rooms, with antique pieces, thick curtains and very comfortable beds. No two are the same: they are all shapes and sizes and some of the bathrooms are very small. You’ll find a vase of fresh flowers and the Egyptian cotton sheets will be turned down while you are at dinner. Read expert review From £220per night • Scotland hotels: the best places to stay on Scottish lochs The Roxburghe Hotel And Golf CourseKelso, Scottish Borders, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating The drawing room at The Roxburghe feels like a private house, with its family portraits and photographs, books and ornaments, and its welcoming groups of sofas and armchairs. Elsewhere there are tartan carpets, collections of whiskey and gin, plentiful open fires and the homely smell of woodsmoke. Bedrooms, some of which were designed by the Duchess of Roxburghe, are all different and decorated in traditional country house style. Three rooms have open fires, with coal and logs provided - the greatest luxury in a country hotel bedroom. Read expert review From £171per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

The best country house hotels in Britain

The British country house hotel was born in 1949, brought to us in the pink and frilly shape of Sharrow Bay, overlooking Ullswater in the Lake District. Presided over by a splendid couple, Francis Coulson and his partner Brian Sack, it came complete with a gargantuan afternoon tea, and Sack’s famous Icky Sticky Toffee Pudding and Coulson’s bedtime poems on the pillow. People adored it. There had been leisure hotels in Britain before, of course, but this was the first where you could be assured of being personally pampered in beautiful rural surroundings, with a committed owner at the helm offering a warm welcome, decent food, peace and quiet. Hundreds of characterful country house hotels have followed, and today there’s a bewildering amount from which to choose. Here we present the cream of the crop. While some continue to offer no more than the pleasures of a beautiful old house, a roaring fire and a cup of tea, others cater to our increased demands: for spas, cookery courses and activities such as foraging. All these hotels share in common comfort, excellent food and the joys of the English countryside. England Lime WoodNew Forest, Hampshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating It’s the attention to detail throughout Lime Wood that makes it special. The oak doors are thick and stylised sitting rooms melt one into the other, pale lemon into lilac into mint green, each with an open fire. As for the food, that most grounded of all celebrity chefs, Angela Hartnett, has joined forces with existing Lime Wood chef Luke Holder and to produce Italian inspired dishes that are as informal, yet polished as their surroundings. Read expert review From £245per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire • Find exclusive UK hotel and restaurant offers from Telegraph Travel Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'SaisonsOxfordshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The style is a happy marriage between stately Oxfordshire and eccentric French fancy. The honey-coloured Manor house creates an attractive focus around which an eclectic mix of 15th-century ponds, Provençal lavender rows, a Japanese garden, kitsch sculptures and a wild mushroom patch can all co-exist. Seasonality is king in its two-Michelin starred restaurant. A 1930s-style bar serves comforting cocktails and the wine cellar stocks a French dominated list of more than 1,000 different wines. Read expert review From £756per night • The best country house hotels in Britain Lympstone ManorExmouth, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Britain's most exciting new country house hotel in decades, with double-Michelin-starred BBC Great British Menu icon Michael Caines MBE at the helm. The man himself takes the time to greet guests and can often be spied striding through the halls in his white chef overalls. Don't miss the eight-course tasting menu dinner. Many chefs get bogged down in zany experiments with foams and moleculars. Michael prefers to bravely poke at the booby-trapped boundary between sumptuous and sickly. Book a room with an outdoor bath overlooking the golden syrup sunsets of the Exe estuary. Read expert review From £290per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com The best hotels in Oxfordshire Save up to 70% on hotel deals via our partner Secret Escapes ClivedenTaplow, Berkshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating This has to be one of the loveliest spots for a hotel, overlooking a spectacular 19th-century parterre and surrounded by acres of ancient woodland running down to the Thames. Contrary to its appearance, Cliveden is not in the least bit stuck up and doesn’t mind whether you turn up in a Ferrari or a Fiat. The house has witnessed much intrigue over the years – it was the setting for the infamous Profumo affair – and a hint of naughtiness remains. Read expert review From £340per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Berkshire Chewton Glen HotelNew Forest, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel has lovely grounds and guests can follow the stream through the woods to emerge at Naish Beach, with a view of the Needles rising from the sea. Facilities are legion: a lavish spa, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis centre, nine-hole golf course and many activities, from archery and buggy riding to duck herding. Bedrooms and suites, in many different styles, display astonishing attention to detail, down to the stamped postcards on each desk. Read expert review From £315per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire Hambleton HallRutland, East Midlands, England 9Telegraph expert rating Beautifully decorated by Stefa Hart, who with her husband Tim has owned and run Hambleton Hall since 1979, the house exudes a feeling of controlled and carefully orchestrated wellbeing without ever feeling unnatural or overly theatrical. The flowing country house good looks are matched by the surrounding gardens and the beautiful view of Rutland Water from the lovely flower filled terrace. The cooking of Aaron Patterson, who began here as a 16-year-old sous chef, easily deserves its long held Michelin star and is rooted in local and seasonal produce, charmingly presented and always delicious. Read expert review From £265per night • The best hotels in Rutland Gidleigh ParkChagford, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Perched atop a bank overlooking private woodlands traced by a boulder-strewn river, Gidleigh’s location is wild and dramatic. The décor is stylish if a little straight-laced, with everything you’d expect in an English country house hotel: antique furniture, wood panelling, stone fireplaces and elegant bouquets of flowers. The 24 bedrooms are decorated individually in a classic English country style, with supersized beds, roll-top baths, televisions, L’Occitane toiletries, spring water from the Gidleigh Estate, bowls of fresh fruit and complimentary decanters of Madeira. Read expert review From £248per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon Askham HallPenrith, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating A mixture of family furniture and paintings have been combined with more modern, or quirky pieces to create something both charming and unusual. The whole place feels part stately home, part private club, but mostly unique. Richard Swale is a gifted chef who draws his influences from, amongst others, Magnus Nilsson of Faviken restaurant in Sweden and Shaun Hill of the Walnut Tree, in Wales. Richard’s food is locally grown, or personally preserved and tastes correspondingly fresh and interesting. Read expert review From £150per night • The best hotels in Cumbria Calcot ManorTetbury, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating A weathered stone manor house and farm building that’s grown to house 35 guest rooms, a gorgeous spa, a function centre in a converted barn, an Ofsted-registered crèche in the kids’ Playzone and two restaurants. Double rooms are in the manor; family rooms overlook the outdoor pool. There’s something incredibly relaxing about this hotel, with 'country modern’ bedrooms that manage to be both cosy and elegant, soothing and spoiling, natural and sophisticated. When it was time to go home, we refused to leave, cancelled everything and booked for another night. It’s honestly that good. Read expert review From £204per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Augill CastleKirkby Stephen, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating Augill Castle stands in 20 acres of grounds in the beautiful upper Eden Valley, within striking distance of both the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. The owners have created a highly individual hotel with minimal rules, a great sense of relaxation and welcome to all – unusual and imaginative with a 'family friends’ feel. The 15 bedrooms are eclectic and slightly eccentric with a mix of antique and contemporary pieces and an array of unusual and pretty bedsteads. Dining is a social occasion. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Cumbria Summer Lodge Country House Hotel & SpaEvershot, Dorset, England 9Telegraph expert rating Decoration and style tends towards the feminine and the flouncy with fabric covered ceilings and padded fabric walls, pictures of dogs, plenty of cushions and so on but they add up, in general, to a feeling of spoiling indulgence and do not, mercifully, overwhelm. The drawing room, designed by the poet and author Thomas Hardy, is admirably classic in style, now painted a pretty blue, and the bedrooms are divinely pretty and comfortable. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Dorset Cowley ManorCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating One of the first of the new breed of contemporary country house hotels to put their spa, C-side, at the heart of their offering. The glass-fronted building is a beautiful piece of modern design, sunk into a hill to one side. The treatments in the four rooms use the hotel’s own Green & Spring products, employing local natural products. There are indoor and outdoor pools and a dedicated manicure and pedicure area, gym, steam room and sauna. Read expert review From £195per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gloucestershire Gilpin Hotel & Lake HouseLake Windermere, Lake District, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is a characterful Georgian house, built in 1901 and owned by three generations of the Cunliffe family. That’s not to say it’s a creaking relic — the décor is glamorous boutique meets country pile. Life at the Gilpin is all about kicking back — and that’s helped by the service, about which it’s hard to say anything negative. Everyone smiles, everyone says hello — yet it’s not overbearing. Fishing, shooting, horse riding, mountain biking, paintballing and treasure hunts can also be organised on-site. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Four Seasons Hotel HampshireWinchfield, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating Built in the 18th century as a manor house, the hotel is set amid 500 acres of green fields and paddocks full of grazing horses. Inside, it’s all slick and stylish, a blend of traditional and contemporary, as befits a metropolitan, cosmopolitan Four Seasons hotel set in English countryside. Bedrooms are sophisticated and elegant, traditional in style but with high-tech amenities and large marble bathrooms, and flexible sleeping options for families. The fine dining restaurant, Seasons, is very elegant, and there is a more casual bistro, a bar with open fire and library for afternoon tea. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire The Pig at CombeGittisham, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Sexy and fun as well as romantic. The 27 rooms are some of the most charming, traditional yet stylish (larders and minibars cleverly hidden inside antique cupboards; some televisions disguised as antique mirrors), comfortable, practical, quirky and soothing of any hotel bedrooms in the land. Head chef Dan Gavriilidis is responsible for the Devon version of the Pigs’ informal '25 Mile’ menu, featuring the produce of the kitchen gardens and poly tunnels and the best locally-sourced ingredients. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Mr & Mrs Smith • The best hotels in Devon Barnsley HouseCirencester, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating What a beauty. With its golden stone, gables and mullion windows this is a dreamily romantic house. But for all that, the building is magnificently upstaged by its garden. There are four acres of formal gardens including a knot garden and a potager. Cream furnishings in the rooms enhance engaging artworks, all based on the theme of nature – a row of bird houses; a chandelier cleverly created out of flower pots. Everything about the restaurant has been calibrated to convey a sense of pleasing simplicity – although of course that requires much painstaking effort. Read expert review From £181per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Ellenborough ParkCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating A group of honeystone buildings is set around a historic Cotswold manor house that was embellished with castle-like towers in the mid-19th century. The 61 generously sized bedrooms are a world away from the shabby-chic looks or the pared back minimalism that are now the norm in other rural retreats. With stripy wallpaper and sprucely comfy armchairs, and with swathes of linen chintz in some rooms, panelling in others, the interiors are a contemporary take on traditional British country style. Read expert review From £126per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Lucknam ParkWiltshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The hotel sits within a 500-acre estate that encompasses meadows, paddocks and woodland. The main building is a beautiful, symmetrical, creeper-covered Palladian mansion dating from 1720. Its public rooms are opulent and elegant, with a traditional country house feel. They include a panelled library, a drawing room with a corniced ceiling, an ornate fireplace as well as tassled curtains and sofas, and The Park Restaurant, laid out with white-clothed tables under a sky-painted ceiling. Read expert review From £230per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wiltshire Lords Of The ManorUpper Slaughter, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating The oldest parts of this mellow-stone manor house date from around 1649, with gables, wings and bay windows added in later centuries. Traditional rather than style-conscious, the public rooms are furnished with antiques. The 26 rooms in total split into five categories, comfortably furnished with embroidered silk throws on beds and soft lighting. The Michelin-starred restaurant is a key reason for staying at this hotel. The £69 three-course dinner menu may include starters of squab pigeon or foie gras with smoked eel and mains of Gloucestershire Old Spot suckling pig with rhubarb or local venison. Read expert review From £150per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Hotel EndsleighTavistock, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Built in 1812 as the holiday home for the Duchess of Bedford, Georgiana Russell, this wildly romantic, chintz-free country estate, run by Channel 5’s Hotel Inspector, Alex Polizzi, is steeped in royal history. It’s a verdantly gardened, Grade 1-listed Eden between Dartmoor and Exmoor, with shell houses and hidden glades for romantic tête-à-têtes. The cream teas are worth the journey alone: a help-yourself affair of just-baked scones accompanied by massive urns of clotted cream and fruit-laden strawberry jam. Breakfasts, too, are a cut above the rivals. Read expert review From £198per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon The House at BeaverbrookSurrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Step into a bygone era of English high society, original artworks and antiques at this luxurious country house hotel, where press baron Lord Beaverbrook entertained world leaders and literary greats. Grandeur and opulence ooze from every room, beautifully designed by Susie Atkinson: A cosy morning room with log fire and plump, squishy sofas offers stunning views of the North Downs and Italianate garden. The library's shelves heave with weighty tomes, and the UK's first home cinema, where Beaverbrook and Sir Winston Churchill discussed the war's progress, still has the original wood-panelling and lighting. Read expert review From £225per night • The best hotels in Surrey Bovey CastleMoretonhampstead, Dartmoor, England 9Telegraph expert rating This grand stately pile on a sporting estate in Dartmoor National Park caters for every whim, whether rugged outdoor pursuits or fine dining and pampering. Inside, there’s a heated swimming pool and whirlpool with deckchairs overlooking the grounds, plus steam room, sauna and gym, while the ESPA Spa offers an extensive range of treatments. Outside, in the 275-acre grounds, there’s an 18-hole championship golf course, tennis courts, a croquet pitch, archery and rifle range, putting green, helipad and beautiful lakeside walks to be had. Read expert review From £112per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels on Dartmoor Great FostersEgham, Surrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Italian gilt furniture, exquisite Flemish tapestries, elaborate Jacobean fireplaces and a one-Michelin-starred restaurant are the crowning glories of this luxury country-house hotel – once a 16th-century royal hunting lodge used by both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Oak paneling, beautifully-carved Jacobean fire-pieces plus a secret staircase – even 17th-century graffiti – await guests who enter the Grade I-listed building via a low wicket door. Traces of royal ancestry are everywhere, in Elizabeth’s coat of arms above the porch, and on the ceiling, dating from the 1500s and decorated with Queen Anne Boleyn’s personal crests. Read expert review From £122per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Surrey Wales Palé HallLlandderfel, Gwynedd, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating Complete with spire, porte-cochère and a grand entrance hall, hand stencilled by the owners, this mansion feels regal and is astonishingly well preserved. The wealth of period features: stained-glass, tiles, wood panelling, chandeliers, fireplaces and so on, are complemented by Angela Harper’s decoration, making liberal use of antiques, Zoffany and Sanderson wallpapers, paintings (including Snowdonia artist Rob Reen’s striking canvases of sheep) and collections of glass. Read expert review From £199per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gwynedd Gliffaes Country House HotelBrecon Beacons, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating What’s not to love? Down a rural track, Gliffaes reclines peacefully in 33-acre grounds in the shadow of the Black Mountains and on the edge of the River Usk. With antique dressers, floral drapes, retro Roberts radios, and carpets you can sink your toes into, the look is traditionally elegant, never twee. Excellent restaurant. Read expert review From £110per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Bodysgallen Hall and SpaLlandudno, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The medieval core of a fine 16th-century mansion, the tower was built as a lookout for Conwy Castle. The higher you climb, the older its spiralling staircase becomes: Victorian at the bottom, 13th-century at the top. The encircling view is enthralling. As you turn, first Conwy Castle, then Snowdonia, then the sea and Anglesey, then Great Orme, catching the golden light, and lastly Llandudno, with the promise of its marvellous 19th-century promenade, come into view. Read expert review From £185per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The most romantic hotels in Wales Llangoed HallPowys, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating The house itself, redesigned by Clough Williams-Ellis in 1912, has great presence. Later bought and restored by Sir Bernard Ashley, widower of Laura, family photographs, as well as his fine collection of early 20th-century British paintings, including a collection of prints by James McNeil Whistler abound. Guests are encouraged to relax, curl up on sofas and play the piano. Read expert review From £99per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales The GroveNarberth, Pembrokeshire, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is set in 26 acres of grounds amid deep countryside, with distant views of the Preseli Hills. The main building is a handsome three-storey residence with Georgian proportions and distinctive Arts and Crafts panelling and fireplaces. The lounges – cosy yet elegant, with real fires, window seats, plush sofas and modern prints and paintings of coastal Pembrokeshire – set the tone of the whole property. There are 26 rooms in total. Expect treats such as the softest of sheets, posh toiletries, thick towels and house-made biscotti. Read expert review From £145per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Scotland The Gleneagles HotelAuchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating Built in the 1920s as a railway resort hotel, the design is Scottish Baronial meets French chateau, with all the opulent comfort of a grand country house on steroids. (A dull-looking modern addition to one side is easily ignored). It’s so big you need the map provided when you arrive, but this five-star formality comes with a splendid sense of ease: time seems to slow from the moment the kilted doorman welcomes you to the hotel. Read expert review From £265per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Scotland Inverlochy Castle HotelFort William, Highlands, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating No bows to passing fashions here. Moving with the times means waterfall showers, Bang & Olufsen stereos and televisions, while the unashamedly country house style - all swags, gilt, silk and brocade, sparkling crystal, polished wood and an all-pervading sense of time suspended, remains. Nowhere else makes grandeur so cosy, combining Jacobite rose wallpaper, Venetian chandeliers and French Empire-style ceiling frescos with perfectly judged élan. Dinner begins with a drink by the fire in the Great Hall, followed by a delightfully light-handed five-course menu with a distinctly Highland accent. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • Top 10: the best Scottish castle hotels Isle of Eriska HotelArgyll & Bute, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating Calm and solitude are assured in a haven of herons and badgers, where the loudest sound is likely to be a fishing boat puttering over tranquil water. The trappings of Victorian wealth and privilege pervade drawing rooms filled with deep sofas, fireplaces and books in the imposing granite and red sandstone Big House. Elegant and comfortable without being stuffy, the ambiance is warm and welcoming, with soft, bright furnishings and piles of wellingtons by the front door of the oak-panelled hall. Carry on, Jeeves. Read expert review From £330per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels for spa breaks in Scotland Killiecrankie HotelPerth and Kinross, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating With direct access to the beautiful Pass of Killiecrankie, the deep river gorge formed by the River Garry, the whitewashed 1840s house has been a hotel since 1939. There are 10 pretty and homely rooms, with antique pieces, thick curtains and very comfortable beds. No two are the same: they are all shapes and sizes and some of the bathrooms are very small. You’ll find a vase of fresh flowers and the Egyptian cotton sheets will be turned down while you are at dinner. Read expert review From £220per night • Scotland hotels: the best places to stay on Scottish lochs The Roxburghe Hotel And Golf CourseKelso, Scottish Borders, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating The drawing room at The Roxburghe feels like a private house, with its family portraits and photographs, books and ornaments, and its welcoming groups of sofas and armchairs. Elsewhere there are tartan carpets, collections of whiskey and gin, plentiful open fires and the homely smell of woodsmoke. Bedrooms, some of which were designed by the Duchess of Roxburghe, are all different and decorated in traditional country house style. Three rooms have open fires, with coal and logs provided - the greatest luxury in a country hotel bedroom. Read expert review From £171per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

The best country house hotels in Britain

The British country house hotel was born in 1949, brought to us in the pink and frilly shape of Sharrow Bay, overlooking Ullswater in the Lake District. Presided over by a splendid couple, Francis Coulson and his partner Brian Sack, it came complete with a gargantuan afternoon tea, and Sack’s famous Icky Sticky Toffee Pudding and Coulson’s bedtime poems on the pillow. People adored it. There had been leisure hotels in Britain before, of course, but this was the first where you could be assured of being personally pampered in beautiful rural surroundings, with a committed owner at the helm offering a warm welcome, decent food, peace and quiet. Hundreds of characterful country house hotels have followed, and today there’s a bewildering amount from which to choose. Here we present the cream of the crop. While some continue to offer no more than the pleasures of a beautiful old house, a roaring fire and a cup of tea, others cater to our increased demands: for spas, cookery courses and activities such as foraging. All these hotels share in common comfort, excellent food and the joys of the English countryside. England Lime WoodNew Forest, Hampshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating It’s the attention to detail throughout Lime Wood that makes it special. The oak doors are thick and stylised sitting rooms melt one into the other, pale lemon into lilac into mint green, each with an open fire. As for the food, that most grounded of all celebrity chefs, Angela Hartnett, has joined forces with existing Lime Wood chef Luke Holder and to produce Italian inspired dishes that are as informal, yet polished as their surroundings. Read expert review From £245per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire • Find exclusive UK hotel and restaurant offers from Telegraph Travel Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'SaisonsOxfordshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The style is a happy marriage between stately Oxfordshire and eccentric French fancy. The honey-coloured Manor house creates an attractive focus around which an eclectic mix of 15th-century ponds, Provençal lavender rows, a Japanese garden, kitsch sculptures and a wild mushroom patch can all co-exist. Seasonality is king in its two-Michelin starred restaurant. A 1930s-style bar serves comforting cocktails and the wine cellar stocks a French dominated list of more than 1,000 different wines. Read expert review From £756per night • The best country house hotels in Britain Lympstone ManorExmouth, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Britain's most exciting new country house hotel in decades, with double-Michelin-starred BBC Great British Menu icon Michael Caines MBE at the helm. The man himself takes the time to greet guests and can often be spied striding through the halls in his white chef overalls. Don't miss the eight-course tasting menu dinner. Many chefs get bogged down in zany experiments with foams and moleculars. Michael prefers to bravely poke at the booby-trapped boundary between sumptuous and sickly. Book a room with an outdoor bath overlooking the golden syrup sunsets of the Exe estuary. Read expert review From £290per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com The best hotels in Oxfordshire Save up to 70% on hotel deals via our partner Secret Escapes ClivedenTaplow, Berkshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating This has to be one of the loveliest spots for a hotel, overlooking a spectacular 19th-century parterre and surrounded by acres of ancient woodland running down to the Thames. Contrary to its appearance, Cliveden is not in the least bit stuck up and doesn’t mind whether you turn up in a Ferrari or a Fiat. The house has witnessed much intrigue over the years – it was the setting for the infamous Profumo affair – and a hint of naughtiness remains. Read expert review From £340per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Berkshire Chewton Glen HotelNew Forest, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel has lovely grounds and guests can follow the stream through the woods to emerge at Naish Beach, with a view of the Needles rising from the sea. Facilities are legion: a lavish spa, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis centre, nine-hole golf course and many activities, from archery and buggy riding to duck herding. Bedrooms and suites, in many different styles, display astonishing attention to detail, down to the stamped postcards on each desk. Read expert review From £315per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire Hambleton HallRutland, East Midlands, England 9Telegraph expert rating Beautifully decorated by Stefa Hart, who with her husband Tim has owned and run Hambleton Hall since 1979, the house exudes a feeling of controlled and carefully orchestrated wellbeing without ever feeling unnatural or overly theatrical. The flowing country house good looks are matched by the surrounding gardens and the beautiful view of Rutland Water from the lovely flower filled terrace. The cooking of Aaron Patterson, who began here as a 16-year-old sous chef, easily deserves its long held Michelin star and is rooted in local and seasonal produce, charmingly presented and always delicious. Read expert review From £265per night • The best hotels in Rutland Gidleigh ParkChagford, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Perched atop a bank overlooking private woodlands traced by a boulder-strewn river, Gidleigh’s location is wild and dramatic. The décor is stylish if a little straight-laced, with everything you’d expect in an English country house hotel: antique furniture, wood panelling, stone fireplaces and elegant bouquets of flowers. The 24 bedrooms are decorated individually in a classic English country style, with supersized beds, roll-top baths, televisions, L’Occitane toiletries, spring water from the Gidleigh Estate, bowls of fresh fruit and complimentary decanters of Madeira. Read expert review From £248per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon Askham HallPenrith, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating A mixture of family furniture and paintings have been combined with more modern, or quirky pieces to create something both charming and unusual. The whole place feels part stately home, part private club, but mostly unique. Richard Swale is a gifted chef who draws his influences from, amongst others, Magnus Nilsson of Faviken restaurant in Sweden and Shaun Hill of the Walnut Tree, in Wales. Richard’s food is locally grown, or personally preserved and tastes correspondingly fresh and interesting. Read expert review From £150per night • The best hotels in Cumbria Calcot ManorTetbury, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating A weathered stone manor house and farm building that’s grown to house 35 guest rooms, a gorgeous spa, a function centre in a converted barn, an Ofsted-registered crèche in the kids’ Playzone and two restaurants. Double rooms are in the manor; family rooms overlook the outdoor pool. There’s something incredibly relaxing about this hotel, with 'country modern’ bedrooms that manage to be both cosy and elegant, soothing and spoiling, natural and sophisticated. When it was time to go home, we refused to leave, cancelled everything and booked for another night. It’s honestly that good. Read expert review From £204per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Augill CastleKirkby Stephen, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating Augill Castle stands in 20 acres of grounds in the beautiful upper Eden Valley, within striking distance of both the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. The owners have created a highly individual hotel with minimal rules, a great sense of relaxation and welcome to all – unusual and imaginative with a 'family friends’ feel. The 15 bedrooms are eclectic and slightly eccentric with a mix of antique and contemporary pieces and an array of unusual and pretty bedsteads. Dining is a social occasion. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Cumbria Summer Lodge Country House Hotel & SpaEvershot, Dorset, England 9Telegraph expert rating Decoration and style tends towards the feminine and the flouncy with fabric covered ceilings and padded fabric walls, pictures of dogs, plenty of cushions and so on but they add up, in general, to a feeling of spoiling indulgence and do not, mercifully, overwhelm. The drawing room, designed by the poet and author Thomas Hardy, is admirably classic in style, now painted a pretty blue, and the bedrooms are divinely pretty and comfortable. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Dorset Cowley ManorCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating One of the first of the new breed of contemporary country house hotels to put their spa, C-side, at the heart of their offering. The glass-fronted building is a beautiful piece of modern design, sunk into a hill to one side. The treatments in the four rooms use the hotel’s own Green & Spring products, employing local natural products. There are indoor and outdoor pools and a dedicated manicure and pedicure area, gym, steam room and sauna. Read expert review From £195per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gloucestershire Gilpin Hotel & Lake HouseLake Windermere, Lake District, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is a characterful Georgian house, built in 1901 and owned by three generations of the Cunliffe family. That’s not to say it’s a creaking relic — the décor is glamorous boutique meets country pile. Life at the Gilpin is all about kicking back — and that’s helped by the service, about which it’s hard to say anything negative. Everyone smiles, everyone says hello — yet it’s not overbearing. Fishing, shooting, horse riding, mountain biking, paintballing and treasure hunts can also be organised on-site. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Four Seasons Hotel HampshireWinchfield, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating Built in the 18th century as a manor house, the hotel is set amid 500 acres of green fields and paddocks full of grazing horses. Inside, it’s all slick and stylish, a blend of traditional and contemporary, as befits a metropolitan, cosmopolitan Four Seasons hotel set in English countryside. Bedrooms are sophisticated and elegant, traditional in style but with high-tech amenities and large marble bathrooms, and flexible sleeping options for families. The fine dining restaurant, Seasons, is very elegant, and there is a more casual bistro, a bar with open fire and library for afternoon tea. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire The Pig at CombeGittisham, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Sexy and fun as well as romantic. The 27 rooms are some of the most charming, traditional yet stylish (larders and minibars cleverly hidden inside antique cupboards; some televisions disguised as antique mirrors), comfortable, practical, quirky and soothing of any hotel bedrooms in the land. Head chef Dan Gavriilidis is responsible for the Devon version of the Pigs’ informal '25 Mile’ menu, featuring the produce of the kitchen gardens and poly tunnels and the best locally-sourced ingredients. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Mr & Mrs Smith • The best hotels in Devon Barnsley HouseCirencester, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating What a beauty. With its golden stone, gables and mullion windows this is a dreamily romantic house. But for all that, the building is magnificently upstaged by its garden. There are four acres of formal gardens including a knot garden and a potager. Cream furnishings in the rooms enhance engaging artworks, all based on the theme of nature – a row of bird houses; a chandelier cleverly created out of flower pots. Everything about the restaurant has been calibrated to convey a sense of pleasing simplicity – although of course that requires much painstaking effort. Read expert review From £181per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Ellenborough ParkCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating A group of honeystone buildings is set around a historic Cotswold manor house that was embellished with castle-like towers in the mid-19th century. The 61 generously sized bedrooms are a world away from the shabby-chic looks or the pared back minimalism that are now the norm in other rural retreats. With stripy wallpaper and sprucely comfy armchairs, and with swathes of linen chintz in some rooms, panelling in others, the interiors are a contemporary take on traditional British country style. Read expert review From £126per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Lucknam ParkWiltshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The hotel sits within a 500-acre estate that encompasses meadows, paddocks and woodland. The main building is a beautiful, symmetrical, creeper-covered Palladian mansion dating from 1720. Its public rooms are opulent and elegant, with a traditional country house feel. They include a panelled library, a drawing room with a corniced ceiling, an ornate fireplace as well as tassled curtains and sofas, and The Park Restaurant, laid out with white-clothed tables under a sky-painted ceiling. Read expert review From £230per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wiltshire Lords Of The ManorUpper Slaughter, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating The oldest parts of this mellow-stone manor house date from around 1649, with gables, wings and bay windows added in later centuries. Traditional rather than style-conscious, the public rooms are furnished with antiques. The 26 rooms in total split into five categories, comfortably furnished with embroidered silk throws on beds and soft lighting. The Michelin-starred restaurant is a key reason for staying at this hotel. The £69 three-course dinner menu may include starters of squab pigeon or foie gras with smoked eel and mains of Gloucestershire Old Spot suckling pig with rhubarb or local venison. Read expert review From £150per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Hotel EndsleighTavistock, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Built in 1812 as the holiday home for the Duchess of Bedford, Georgiana Russell, this wildly romantic, chintz-free country estate, run by Channel 5’s Hotel Inspector, Alex Polizzi, is steeped in royal history. It’s a verdantly gardened, Grade 1-listed Eden between Dartmoor and Exmoor, with shell houses and hidden glades for romantic tête-à-têtes. The cream teas are worth the journey alone: a help-yourself affair of just-baked scones accompanied by massive urns of clotted cream and fruit-laden strawberry jam. Breakfasts, too, are a cut above the rivals. Read expert review From £198per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon The House at BeaverbrookSurrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Step into a bygone era of English high society, original artworks and antiques at this luxurious country house hotel, where press baron Lord Beaverbrook entertained world leaders and literary greats. Grandeur and opulence ooze from every room, beautifully designed by Susie Atkinson: A cosy morning room with log fire and plump, squishy sofas offers stunning views of the North Downs and Italianate garden. The library's shelves heave with weighty tomes, and the UK's first home cinema, where Beaverbrook and Sir Winston Churchill discussed the war's progress, still has the original wood-panelling and lighting. Read expert review From £225per night • The best hotels in Surrey Bovey CastleMoretonhampstead, Dartmoor, England 9Telegraph expert rating This grand stately pile on a sporting estate in Dartmoor National Park caters for every whim, whether rugged outdoor pursuits or fine dining and pampering. Inside, there’s a heated swimming pool and whirlpool with deckchairs overlooking the grounds, plus steam room, sauna and gym, while the ESPA Spa offers an extensive range of treatments. Outside, in the 275-acre grounds, there’s an 18-hole championship golf course, tennis courts, a croquet pitch, archery and rifle range, putting green, helipad and beautiful lakeside walks to be had. Read expert review From £112per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels on Dartmoor Great FostersEgham, Surrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Italian gilt furniture, exquisite Flemish tapestries, elaborate Jacobean fireplaces and a one-Michelin-starred restaurant are the crowning glories of this luxury country-house hotel – once a 16th-century royal hunting lodge used by both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Oak paneling, beautifully-carved Jacobean fire-pieces plus a secret staircase – even 17th-century graffiti – await guests who enter the Grade I-listed building via a low wicket door. Traces of royal ancestry are everywhere, in Elizabeth’s coat of arms above the porch, and on the ceiling, dating from the 1500s and decorated with Queen Anne Boleyn’s personal crests. Read expert review From £122per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Surrey Wales Palé HallLlandderfel, Gwynedd, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating Complete with spire, porte-cochère and a grand entrance hall, hand stencilled by the owners, this mansion feels regal and is astonishingly well preserved. The wealth of period features: stained-glass, tiles, wood panelling, chandeliers, fireplaces and so on, are complemented by Angela Harper’s decoration, making liberal use of antiques, Zoffany and Sanderson wallpapers, paintings (including Snowdonia artist Rob Reen’s striking canvases of sheep) and collections of glass. Read expert review From £199per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gwynedd Gliffaes Country House HotelBrecon Beacons, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating What’s not to love? Down a rural track, Gliffaes reclines peacefully in 33-acre grounds in the shadow of the Black Mountains and on the edge of the River Usk. With antique dressers, floral drapes, retro Roberts radios, and carpets you can sink your toes into, the look is traditionally elegant, never twee. Excellent restaurant. Read expert review From £110per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Bodysgallen Hall and SpaLlandudno, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The medieval core of a fine 16th-century mansion, the tower was built as a lookout for Conwy Castle. The higher you climb, the older its spiralling staircase becomes: Victorian at the bottom, 13th-century at the top. The encircling view is enthralling. As you turn, first Conwy Castle, then Snowdonia, then the sea and Anglesey, then Great Orme, catching the golden light, and lastly Llandudno, with the promise of its marvellous 19th-century promenade, come into view. Read expert review From £185per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The most romantic hotels in Wales Llangoed HallPowys, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating The house itself, redesigned by Clough Williams-Ellis in 1912, has great presence. Later bought and restored by Sir Bernard Ashley, widower of Laura, family photographs, as well as his fine collection of early 20th-century British paintings, including a collection of prints by James McNeil Whistler abound. Guests are encouraged to relax, curl up on sofas and play the piano. Read expert review From £99per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales The GroveNarberth, Pembrokeshire, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is set in 26 acres of grounds amid deep countryside, with distant views of the Preseli Hills. The main building is a handsome three-storey residence with Georgian proportions and distinctive Arts and Crafts panelling and fireplaces. The lounges – cosy yet elegant, with real fires, window seats, plush sofas and modern prints and paintings of coastal Pembrokeshire – set the tone of the whole property. There are 26 rooms in total. Expect treats such as the softest of sheets, posh toiletries, thick towels and house-made biscotti. Read expert review From £145per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Scotland The Gleneagles HotelAuchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating Built in the 1920s as a railway resort hotel, the design is Scottish Baronial meets French chateau, with all the opulent comfort of a grand country house on steroids. (A dull-looking modern addition to one side is easily ignored). It’s so big you need the map provided when you arrive, but this five-star formality comes with a splendid sense of ease: time seems to slow from the moment the kilted doorman welcomes you to the hotel. Read expert review From £265per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Scotland Inverlochy Castle HotelFort William, Highlands, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating No bows to passing fashions here. Moving with the times means waterfall showers, Bang & Olufsen stereos and televisions, while the unashamedly country house style - all swags, gilt, silk and brocade, sparkling crystal, polished wood and an all-pervading sense of time suspended, remains. Nowhere else makes grandeur so cosy, combining Jacobite rose wallpaper, Venetian chandeliers and French Empire-style ceiling frescos with perfectly judged élan. Dinner begins with a drink by the fire in the Great Hall, followed by a delightfully light-handed five-course menu with a distinctly Highland accent. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • Top 10: the best Scottish castle hotels Isle of Eriska HotelArgyll & Bute, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating Calm and solitude are assured in a haven of herons and badgers, where the loudest sound is likely to be a fishing boat puttering over tranquil water. The trappings of Victorian wealth and privilege pervade drawing rooms filled with deep sofas, fireplaces and books in the imposing granite and red sandstone Big House. Elegant and comfortable without being stuffy, the ambiance is warm and welcoming, with soft, bright furnishings and piles of wellingtons by the front door of the oak-panelled hall. Carry on, Jeeves. Read expert review From £330per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels for spa breaks in Scotland Killiecrankie HotelPerth and Kinross, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating With direct access to the beautiful Pass of Killiecrankie, the deep river gorge formed by the River Garry, the whitewashed 1840s house has been a hotel since 1939. There are 10 pretty and homely rooms, with antique pieces, thick curtains and very comfortable beds. No two are the same: they are all shapes and sizes and some of the bathrooms are very small. You’ll find a vase of fresh flowers and the Egyptian cotton sheets will be turned down while you are at dinner. Read expert review From £220per night • Scotland hotels: the best places to stay on Scottish lochs The Roxburghe Hotel And Golf CourseKelso, Scottish Borders, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating The drawing room at The Roxburghe feels like a private house, with its family portraits and photographs, books and ornaments, and its welcoming groups of sofas and armchairs. Elsewhere there are tartan carpets, collections of whiskey and gin, plentiful open fires and the homely smell of woodsmoke. Bedrooms, some of which were designed by the Duchess of Roxburghe, are all different and decorated in traditional country house style. Three rooms have open fires, with coal and logs provided - the greatest luxury in a country hotel bedroom. Read expert review From £171per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

The best country house hotels in Britain

The British country house hotel was born in 1949, brought to us in the pink and frilly shape of Sharrow Bay, overlooking Ullswater in the Lake District. Presided over by a splendid couple, Francis Coulson and his partner Brian Sack, it came complete with a gargantuan afternoon tea, and Sack’s famous Icky Sticky Toffee Pudding and Coulson’s bedtime poems on the pillow. People adored it. There had been leisure hotels in Britain before, of course, but this was the first where you could be assured of being personally pampered in beautiful rural surroundings, with a committed owner at the helm offering a warm welcome, decent food, peace and quiet. Hundreds of characterful country house hotels have followed, and today there’s a bewildering amount from which to choose. Here we present the cream of the crop. While some continue to offer no more than the pleasures of a beautiful old house, a roaring fire and a cup of tea, others cater to our increased demands: for spas, cookery courses and activities such as foraging. All these hotels share in common comfort, excellent food and the joys of the English countryside. England Lime WoodNew Forest, Hampshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating It’s the attention to detail throughout Lime Wood that makes it special. The oak doors are thick and stylised sitting rooms melt one into the other, pale lemon into lilac into mint green, each with an open fire. As for the food, that most grounded of all celebrity chefs, Angela Hartnett, has joined forces with existing Lime Wood chef Luke Holder and to produce Italian inspired dishes that are as informal, yet polished as their surroundings. Read expert review From £245per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire • Find exclusive UK hotel and restaurant offers from Telegraph Travel Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'SaisonsOxfordshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The style is a happy marriage between stately Oxfordshire and eccentric French fancy. The honey-coloured Manor house creates an attractive focus around which an eclectic mix of 15th-century ponds, Provençal lavender rows, a Japanese garden, kitsch sculptures and a wild mushroom patch can all co-exist. Seasonality is king in its two-Michelin starred restaurant. A 1930s-style bar serves comforting cocktails and the wine cellar stocks a French dominated list of more than 1,000 different wines. Read expert review From £756per night • The best country house hotels in Britain Lympstone ManorExmouth, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Britain's most exciting new country house hotel in decades, with double-Michelin-starred BBC Great British Menu icon Michael Caines MBE at the helm. The man himself takes the time to greet guests and can often be spied striding through the halls in his white chef overalls. Don't miss the eight-course tasting menu dinner. Many chefs get bogged down in zany experiments with foams and moleculars. Michael prefers to bravely poke at the booby-trapped boundary between sumptuous and sickly. Book a room with an outdoor bath overlooking the golden syrup sunsets of the Exe estuary. Read expert review From £290per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com The best hotels in Oxfordshire Save up to 70% on hotel deals via our partner Secret Escapes ClivedenTaplow, Berkshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating This has to be one of the loveliest spots for a hotel, overlooking a spectacular 19th-century parterre and surrounded by acres of ancient woodland running down to the Thames. Contrary to its appearance, Cliveden is not in the least bit stuck up and doesn’t mind whether you turn up in a Ferrari or a Fiat. The house has witnessed much intrigue over the years – it was the setting for the infamous Profumo affair – and a hint of naughtiness remains. Read expert review From £340per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Berkshire Chewton Glen HotelNew Forest, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel has lovely grounds and guests can follow the stream through the woods to emerge at Naish Beach, with a view of the Needles rising from the sea. Facilities are legion: a lavish spa, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis centre, nine-hole golf course and many activities, from archery and buggy riding to duck herding. Bedrooms and suites, in many different styles, display astonishing attention to detail, down to the stamped postcards on each desk. Read expert review From £315per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire Hambleton HallRutland, East Midlands, England 9Telegraph expert rating Beautifully decorated by Stefa Hart, who with her husband Tim has owned and run Hambleton Hall since 1979, the house exudes a feeling of controlled and carefully orchestrated wellbeing without ever feeling unnatural or overly theatrical. The flowing country house good looks are matched by the surrounding gardens and the beautiful view of Rutland Water from the lovely flower filled terrace. The cooking of Aaron Patterson, who began here as a 16-year-old sous chef, easily deserves its long held Michelin star and is rooted in local and seasonal produce, charmingly presented and always delicious. Read expert review From £265per night • The best hotels in Rutland Gidleigh ParkChagford, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Perched atop a bank overlooking private woodlands traced by a boulder-strewn river, Gidleigh’s location is wild and dramatic. The décor is stylish if a little straight-laced, with everything you’d expect in an English country house hotel: antique furniture, wood panelling, stone fireplaces and elegant bouquets of flowers. The 24 bedrooms are decorated individually in a classic English country style, with supersized beds, roll-top baths, televisions, L’Occitane toiletries, spring water from the Gidleigh Estate, bowls of fresh fruit and complimentary decanters of Madeira. Read expert review From £248per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon Askham HallPenrith, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating A mixture of family furniture and paintings have been combined with more modern, or quirky pieces to create something both charming and unusual. The whole place feels part stately home, part private club, but mostly unique. Richard Swale is a gifted chef who draws his influences from, amongst others, Magnus Nilsson of Faviken restaurant in Sweden and Shaun Hill of the Walnut Tree, in Wales. Richard’s food is locally grown, or personally preserved and tastes correspondingly fresh and interesting. Read expert review From £150per night • The best hotels in Cumbria Calcot ManorTetbury, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating A weathered stone manor house and farm building that’s grown to house 35 guest rooms, a gorgeous spa, a function centre in a converted barn, an Ofsted-registered crèche in the kids’ Playzone and two restaurants. Double rooms are in the manor; family rooms overlook the outdoor pool. There’s something incredibly relaxing about this hotel, with 'country modern’ bedrooms that manage to be both cosy and elegant, soothing and spoiling, natural and sophisticated. When it was time to go home, we refused to leave, cancelled everything and booked for another night. It’s honestly that good. Read expert review From £204per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Augill CastleKirkby Stephen, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating Augill Castle stands in 20 acres of grounds in the beautiful upper Eden Valley, within striking distance of both the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. The owners have created a highly individual hotel with minimal rules, a great sense of relaxation and welcome to all – unusual and imaginative with a 'family friends’ feel. The 15 bedrooms are eclectic and slightly eccentric with a mix of antique and contemporary pieces and an array of unusual and pretty bedsteads. Dining is a social occasion. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Cumbria Summer Lodge Country House Hotel & SpaEvershot, Dorset, England 9Telegraph expert rating Decoration and style tends towards the feminine and the flouncy with fabric covered ceilings and padded fabric walls, pictures of dogs, plenty of cushions and so on but they add up, in general, to a feeling of spoiling indulgence and do not, mercifully, overwhelm. The drawing room, designed by the poet and author Thomas Hardy, is admirably classic in style, now painted a pretty blue, and the bedrooms are divinely pretty and comfortable. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Dorset Cowley ManorCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating One of the first of the new breed of contemporary country house hotels to put their spa, C-side, at the heart of their offering. The glass-fronted building is a beautiful piece of modern design, sunk into a hill to one side. The treatments in the four rooms use the hotel’s own Green & Spring products, employing local natural products. There are indoor and outdoor pools and a dedicated manicure and pedicure area, gym, steam room and sauna. Read expert review From £195per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gloucestershire Gilpin Hotel & Lake HouseLake Windermere, Lake District, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is a characterful Georgian house, built in 1901 and owned by three generations of the Cunliffe family. That’s not to say it’s a creaking relic — the décor is glamorous boutique meets country pile. Life at the Gilpin is all about kicking back — and that’s helped by the service, about which it’s hard to say anything negative. Everyone smiles, everyone says hello — yet it’s not overbearing. Fishing, shooting, horse riding, mountain biking, paintballing and treasure hunts can also be organised on-site. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Four Seasons Hotel HampshireWinchfield, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating Built in the 18th century as a manor house, the hotel is set amid 500 acres of green fields and paddocks full of grazing horses. Inside, it’s all slick and stylish, a blend of traditional and contemporary, as befits a metropolitan, cosmopolitan Four Seasons hotel set in English countryside. Bedrooms are sophisticated and elegant, traditional in style but with high-tech amenities and large marble bathrooms, and flexible sleeping options for families. The fine dining restaurant, Seasons, is very elegant, and there is a more casual bistro, a bar with open fire and library for afternoon tea. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire The Pig at CombeGittisham, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Sexy and fun as well as romantic. The 27 rooms are some of the most charming, traditional yet stylish (larders and minibars cleverly hidden inside antique cupboards; some televisions disguised as antique mirrors), comfortable, practical, quirky and soothing of any hotel bedrooms in the land. Head chef Dan Gavriilidis is responsible for the Devon version of the Pigs’ informal '25 Mile’ menu, featuring the produce of the kitchen gardens and poly tunnels and the best locally-sourced ingredients. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Mr & Mrs Smith • The best hotels in Devon Barnsley HouseCirencester, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating What a beauty. With its golden stone, gables and mullion windows this is a dreamily romantic house. But for all that, the building is magnificently upstaged by its garden. There are four acres of formal gardens including a knot garden and a potager. Cream furnishings in the rooms enhance engaging artworks, all based on the theme of nature – a row of bird houses; a chandelier cleverly created out of flower pots. Everything about the restaurant has been calibrated to convey a sense of pleasing simplicity – although of course that requires much painstaking effort. Read expert review From £181per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Ellenborough ParkCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating A group of honeystone buildings is set around a historic Cotswold manor house that was embellished with castle-like towers in the mid-19th century. The 61 generously sized bedrooms are a world away from the shabby-chic looks or the pared back minimalism that are now the norm in other rural retreats. With stripy wallpaper and sprucely comfy armchairs, and with swathes of linen chintz in some rooms, panelling in others, the interiors are a contemporary take on traditional British country style. Read expert review From £126per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Lucknam ParkWiltshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The hotel sits within a 500-acre estate that encompasses meadows, paddocks and woodland. The main building is a beautiful, symmetrical, creeper-covered Palladian mansion dating from 1720. Its public rooms are opulent and elegant, with a traditional country house feel. They include a panelled library, a drawing room with a corniced ceiling, an ornate fireplace as well as tassled curtains and sofas, and The Park Restaurant, laid out with white-clothed tables under a sky-painted ceiling. Read expert review From £230per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wiltshire Lords Of The ManorUpper Slaughter, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating The oldest parts of this mellow-stone manor house date from around 1649, with gables, wings and bay windows added in later centuries. Traditional rather than style-conscious, the public rooms are furnished with antiques. The 26 rooms in total split into five categories, comfortably furnished with embroidered silk throws on beds and soft lighting. The Michelin-starred restaurant is a key reason for staying at this hotel. The £69 three-course dinner menu may include starters of squab pigeon or foie gras with smoked eel and mains of Gloucestershire Old Spot suckling pig with rhubarb or local venison. Read expert review From £150per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Hotel EndsleighTavistock, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Built in 1812 as the holiday home for the Duchess of Bedford, Georgiana Russell, this wildly romantic, chintz-free country estate, run by Channel 5’s Hotel Inspector, Alex Polizzi, is steeped in royal history. It’s a verdantly gardened, Grade 1-listed Eden between Dartmoor and Exmoor, with shell houses and hidden glades for romantic tête-à-têtes. The cream teas are worth the journey alone: a help-yourself affair of just-baked scones accompanied by massive urns of clotted cream and fruit-laden strawberry jam. Breakfasts, too, are a cut above the rivals. Read expert review From £198per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon The House at BeaverbrookSurrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Step into a bygone era of English high society, original artworks and antiques at this luxurious country house hotel, where press baron Lord Beaverbrook entertained world leaders and literary greats. Grandeur and opulence ooze from every room, beautifully designed by Susie Atkinson: A cosy morning room with log fire and plump, squishy sofas offers stunning views of the North Downs and Italianate garden. The library's shelves heave with weighty tomes, and the UK's first home cinema, where Beaverbrook and Sir Winston Churchill discussed the war's progress, still has the original wood-panelling and lighting. Read expert review From £225per night • The best hotels in Surrey Bovey CastleMoretonhampstead, Dartmoor, England 9Telegraph expert rating This grand stately pile on a sporting estate in Dartmoor National Park caters for every whim, whether rugged outdoor pursuits or fine dining and pampering. Inside, there’s a heated swimming pool and whirlpool with deckchairs overlooking the grounds, plus steam room, sauna and gym, while the ESPA Spa offers an extensive range of treatments. Outside, in the 275-acre grounds, there’s an 18-hole championship golf course, tennis courts, a croquet pitch, archery and rifle range, putting green, helipad and beautiful lakeside walks to be had. Read expert review From £112per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels on Dartmoor Great FostersEgham, Surrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Italian gilt furniture, exquisite Flemish tapestries, elaborate Jacobean fireplaces and a one-Michelin-starred restaurant are the crowning glories of this luxury country-house hotel – once a 16th-century royal hunting lodge used by both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Oak paneling, beautifully-carved Jacobean fire-pieces plus a secret staircase – even 17th-century graffiti – await guests who enter the Grade I-listed building via a low wicket door. Traces of royal ancestry are everywhere, in Elizabeth’s coat of arms above the porch, and on the ceiling, dating from the 1500s and decorated with Queen Anne Boleyn’s personal crests. Read expert review From £122per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Surrey Wales Palé HallLlandderfel, Gwynedd, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating Complete with spire, porte-cochère and a grand entrance hall, hand stencilled by the owners, this mansion feels regal and is astonishingly well preserved. The wealth of period features: stained-glass, tiles, wood panelling, chandeliers, fireplaces and so on, are complemented by Angela Harper’s decoration, making liberal use of antiques, Zoffany and Sanderson wallpapers, paintings (including Snowdonia artist Rob Reen’s striking canvases of sheep) and collections of glass. Read expert review From £199per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gwynedd Gliffaes Country House HotelBrecon Beacons, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating What’s not to love? Down a rural track, Gliffaes reclines peacefully in 33-acre grounds in the shadow of the Black Mountains and on the edge of the River Usk. With antique dressers, floral drapes, retro Roberts radios, and carpets you can sink your toes into, the look is traditionally elegant, never twee. Excellent restaurant. Read expert review From £110per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Bodysgallen Hall and SpaLlandudno, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The medieval core of a fine 16th-century mansion, the tower was built as a lookout for Conwy Castle. The higher you climb, the older its spiralling staircase becomes: Victorian at the bottom, 13th-century at the top. The encircling view is enthralling. As you turn, first Conwy Castle, then Snowdonia, then the sea and Anglesey, then Great Orme, catching the golden light, and lastly Llandudno, with the promise of its marvellous 19th-century promenade, come into view. Read expert review From £185per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The most romantic hotels in Wales Llangoed HallPowys, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating The house itself, redesigned by Clough Williams-Ellis in 1912, has great presence. Later bought and restored by Sir Bernard Ashley, widower of Laura, family photographs, as well as his fine collection of early 20th-century British paintings, including a collection of prints by James McNeil Whistler abound. Guests are encouraged to relax, curl up on sofas and play the piano. Read expert review From £99per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales The GroveNarberth, Pembrokeshire, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is set in 26 acres of grounds amid deep countryside, with distant views of the Preseli Hills. The main building is a handsome three-storey residence with Georgian proportions and distinctive Arts and Crafts panelling and fireplaces. The lounges – cosy yet elegant, with real fires, window seats, plush sofas and modern prints and paintings of coastal Pembrokeshire – set the tone of the whole property. There are 26 rooms in total. Expect treats such as the softest of sheets, posh toiletries, thick towels and house-made biscotti. Read expert review From £145per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Scotland The Gleneagles HotelAuchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating Built in the 1920s as a railway resort hotel, the design is Scottish Baronial meets French chateau, with all the opulent comfort of a grand country house on steroids. (A dull-looking modern addition to one side is easily ignored). It’s so big you need the map provided when you arrive, but this five-star formality comes with a splendid sense of ease: time seems to slow from the moment the kilted doorman welcomes you to the hotel. Read expert review From £265per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Scotland Inverlochy Castle HotelFort William, Highlands, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating No bows to passing fashions here. Moving with the times means waterfall showers, Bang & Olufsen stereos and televisions, while the unashamedly country house style - all swags, gilt, silk and brocade, sparkling crystal, polished wood and an all-pervading sense of time suspended, remains. Nowhere else makes grandeur so cosy, combining Jacobite rose wallpaper, Venetian chandeliers and French Empire-style ceiling frescos with perfectly judged élan. Dinner begins with a drink by the fire in the Great Hall, followed by a delightfully light-handed five-course menu with a distinctly Highland accent. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • Top 10: the best Scottish castle hotels Isle of Eriska HotelArgyll & Bute, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating Calm and solitude are assured in a haven of herons and badgers, where the loudest sound is likely to be a fishing boat puttering over tranquil water. The trappings of Victorian wealth and privilege pervade drawing rooms filled with deep sofas, fireplaces and books in the imposing granite and red sandstone Big House. Elegant and comfortable without being stuffy, the ambiance is warm and welcoming, with soft, bright furnishings and piles of wellingtons by the front door of the oak-panelled hall. Carry on, Jeeves. Read expert review From £330per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels for spa breaks in Scotland Killiecrankie HotelPerth and Kinross, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating With direct access to the beautiful Pass of Killiecrankie, the deep river gorge formed by the River Garry, the whitewashed 1840s house has been a hotel since 1939. There are 10 pretty and homely rooms, with antique pieces, thick curtains and very comfortable beds. No two are the same: they are all shapes and sizes and some of the bathrooms are very small. You’ll find a vase of fresh flowers and the Egyptian cotton sheets will be turned down while you are at dinner. Read expert review From £220per night • Scotland hotels: the best places to stay on Scottish lochs The Roxburghe Hotel And Golf CourseKelso, Scottish Borders, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating The drawing room at The Roxburghe feels like a private house, with its family portraits and photographs, books and ornaments, and its welcoming groups of sofas and armchairs. Elsewhere there are tartan carpets, collections of whiskey and gin, plentiful open fires and the homely smell of woodsmoke. Bedrooms, some of which were designed by the Duchess of Roxburghe, are all different and decorated in traditional country house style. Three rooms have open fires, with coal and logs provided - the greatest luxury in a country hotel bedroom. Read expert review From £171per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

The best country house hotels in Britain

The British country house hotel was born in 1949, brought to us in the pink and frilly shape of Sharrow Bay, overlooking Ullswater in the Lake District. Presided over by a splendid couple, Francis Coulson and his partner Brian Sack, it came complete with a gargantuan afternoon tea, and Sack’s famous Icky Sticky Toffee Pudding and Coulson’s bedtime poems on the pillow. People adored it. There had been leisure hotels in Britain before, of course, but this was the first where you could be assured of being personally pampered in beautiful rural surroundings, with a committed owner at the helm offering a warm welcome, decent food, peace and quiet. Hundreds of characterful country house hotels have followed, and today there’s a bewildering amount from which to choose. Here we present the cream of the crop. While some continue to offer no more than the pleasures of a beautiful old house, a roaring fire and a cup of tea, others cater to our increased demands: for spas, cookery courses and activities such as foraging. All these hotels share in common comfort, excellent food and the joys of the English countryside. England Lime WoodNew Forest, Hampshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating It’s the attention to detail throughout Lime Wood that makes it special. The oak doors are thick and stylised sitting rooms melt one into the other, pale lemon into lilac into mint green, each with an open fire. As for the food, that most grounded of all celebrity chefs, Angela Hartnett, has joined forces with existing Lime Wood chef Luke Holder and to produce Italian inspired dishes that are as informal, yet polished as their surroundings. Read expert review From £245per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire • Find exclusive UK hotel and restaurant offers from Telegraph Travel Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'SaisonsOxfordshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The style is a happy marriage between stately Oxfordshire and eccentric French fancy. The honey-coloured Manor house creates an attractive focus around which an eclectic mix of 15th-century ponds, Provençal lavender rows, a Japanese garden, kitsch sculptures and a wild mushroom patch can all co-exist. Seasonality is king in its two-Michelin starred restaurant. A 1930s-style bar serves comforting cocktails and the wine cellar stocks a French dominated list of more than 1,000 different wines. Read expert review From £756per night • The best country house hotels in Britain Lympstone ManorExmouth, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Britain's most exciting new country house hotel in decades, with double-Michelin-starred BBC Great British Menu icon Michael Caines MBE at the helm. The man himself takes the time to greet guests and can often be spied striding through the halls in his white chef overalls. Don't miss the eight-course tasting menu dinner. Many chefs get bogged down in zany experiments with foams and moleculars. Michael prefers to bravely poke at the booby-trapped boundary between sumptuous and sickly. Book a room with an outdoor bath overlooking the golden syrup sunsets of the Exe estuary. Read expert review From £290per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com The best hotels in Oxfordshire Save up to 70% on hotel deals via our partner Secret Escapes ClivedenTaplow, Berkshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating This has to be one of the loveliest spots for a hotel, overlooking a spectacular 19th-century parterre and surrounded by acres of ancient woodland running down to the Thames. Contrary to its appearance, Cliveden is not in the least bit stuck up and doesn’t mind whether you turn up in a Ferrari or a Fiat. The house has witnessed much intrigue over the years – it was the setting for the infamous Profumo affair – and a hint of naughtiness remains. Read expert review From £340per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Berkshire Chewton Glen HotelNew Forest, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel has lovely grounds and guests can follow the stream through the woods to emerge at Naish Beach, with a view of the Needles rising from the sea. Facilities are legion: a lavish spa, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis centre, nine-hole golf course and many activities, from archery and buggy riding to duck herding. Bedrooms and suites, in many different styles, display astonishing attention to detail, down to the stamped postcards on each desk. Read expert review From £315per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire Hambleton HallRutland, East Midlands, England 9Telegraph expert rating Beautifully decorated by Stefa Hart, who with her husband Tim has owned and run Hambleton Hall since 1979, the house exudes a feeling of controlled and carefully orchestrated wellbeing without ever feeling unnatural or overly theatrical. The flowing country house good looks are matched by the surrounding gardens and the beautiful view of Rutland Water from the lovely flower filled terrace. The cooking of Aaron Patterson, who began here as a 16-year-old sous chef, easily deserves its long held Michelin star and is rooted in local and seasonal produce, charmingly presented and always delicious. Read expert review From £265per night • The best hotels in Rutland Gidleigh ParkChagford, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Perched atop a bank overlooking private woodlands traced by a boulder-strewn river, Gidleigh’s location is wild and dramatic. The décor is stylish if a little straight-laced, with everything you’d expect in an English country house hotel: antique furniture, wood panelling, stone fireplaces and elegant bouquets of flowers. The 24 bedrooms are decorated individually in a classic English country style, with supersized beds, roll-top baths, televisions, L’Occitane toiletries, spring water from the Gidleigh Estate, bowls of fresh fruit and complimentary decanters of Madeira. Read expert review From £248per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon Askham HallPenrith, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating A mixture of family furniture and paintings have been combined with more modern, or quirky pieces to create something both charming and unusual. The whole place feels part stately home, part private club, but mostly unique. Richard Swale is a gifted chef who draws his influences from, amongst others, Magnus Nilsson of Faviken restaurant in Sweden and Shaun Hill of the Walnut Tree, in Wales. Richard’s food is locally grown, or personally preserved and tastes correspondingly fresh and interesting. Read expert review From £150per night • The best hotels in Cumbria Calcot ManorTetbury, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating A weathered stone manor house and farm building that’s grown to house 35 guest rooms, a gorgeous spa, a function centre in a converted barn, an Ofsted-registered crèche in the kids’ Playzone and two restaurants. Double rooms are in the manor; family rooms overlook the outdoor pool. There’s something incredibly relaxing about this hotel, with 'country modern’ bedrooms that manage to be both cosy and elegant, soothing and spoiling, natural and sophisticated. When it was time to go home, we refused to leave, cancelled everything and booked for another night. It’s honestly that good. Read expert review From £204per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Augill CastleKirkby Stephen, Cumbria, England 9Telegraph expert rating Augill Castle stands in 20 acres of grounds in the beautiful upper Eden Valley, within striking distance of both the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. The owners have created a highly individual hotel with minimal rules, a great sense of relaxation and welcome to all – unusual and imaginative with a 'family friends’ feel. The 15 bedrooms are eclectic and slightly eccentric with a mix of antique and contemporary pieces and an array of unusual and pretty bedsteads. Dining is a social occasion. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Cumbria Summer Lodge Country House Hotel & SpaEvershot, Dorset, England 9Telegraph expert rating Decoration and style tends towards the feminine and the flouncy with fabric covered ceilings and padded fabric walls, pictures of dogs, plenty of cushions and so on but they add up, in general, to a feeling of spoiling indulgence and do not, mercifully, overwhelm. The drawing room, designed by the poet and author Thomas Hardy, is admirably classic in style, now painted a pretty blue, and the bedrooms are divinely pretty and comfortable. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Dorset Cowley ManorCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating One of the first of the new breed of contemporary country house hotels to put their spa, C-side, at the heart of their offering. The glass-fronted building is a beautiful piece of modern design, sunk into a hill to one side. The treatments in the four rooms use the hotel’s own Green & Spring products, employing local natural products. There are indoor and outdoor pools and a dedicated manicure and pedicure area, gym, steam room and sauna. Read expert review From £195per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gloucestershire Gilpin Hotel & Lake HouseLake Windermere, Lake District, England 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is a characterful Georgian house, built in 1901 and owned by three generations of the Cunliffe family. That’s not to say it’s a creaking relic — the décor is glamorous boutique meets country pile. Life at the Gilpin is all about kicking back — and that’s helped by the service, about which it’s hard to say anything negative. Everyone smiles, everyone says hello — yet it’s not overbearing. Fishing, shooting, horse riding, mountain biking, paintballing and treasure hunts can also be organised on-site. Read expert review From £215per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Four Seasons Hotel HampshireWinchfield, Hampshire, England 8Telegraph expert rating Built in the 18th century as a manor house, the hotel is set amid 500 acres of green fields and paddocks full of grazing horses. Inside, it’s all slick and stylish, a blend of traditional and contemporary, as befits a metropolitan, cosmopolitan Four Seasons hotel set in English countryside. Bedrooms are sophisticated and elegant, traditional in style but with high-tech amenities and large marble bathrooms, and flexible sleeping options for families. The fine dining restaurant, Seasons, is very elegant, and there is a more casual bistro, a bar with open fire and library for afternoon tea. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Hampshire The Pig at CombeGittisham, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Sexy and fun as well as romantic. The 27 rooms are some of the most charming, traditional yet stylish (larders and minibars cleverly hidden inside antique cupboards; some televisions disguised as antique mirrors), comfortable, practical, quirky and soothing of any hotel bedrooms in the land. Head chef Dan Gavriilidis is responsible for the Devon version of the Pigs’ informal '25 Mile’ menu, featuring the produce of the kitchen gardens and poly tunnels and the best locally-sourced ingredients. Read expert review From £170per night Check availability Rates provided by Mr & Mrs Smith • The best hotels in Devon Barnsley HouseCirencester, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating What a beauty. With its golden stone, gables and mullion windows this is a dreamily romantic house. But for all that, the building is magnificently upstaged by its garden. There are four acres of formal gardens including a knot garden and a potager. Cream furnishings in the rooms enhance engaging artworks, all based on the theme of nature – a row of bird houses; a chandelier cleverly created out of flower pots. Everything about the restaurant has been calibrated to convey a sense of pleasing simplicity – although of course that requires much painstaking effort. Read expert review From £181per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Ellenborough ParkCheltenham, Gloucestershire, England 8Telegraph expert rating A group of honeystone buildings is set around a historic Cotswold manor house that was embellished with castle-like towers in the mid-19th century. The 61 generously sized bedrooms are a world away from the shabby-chic looks or the pared back minimalism that are now the norm in other rural retreats. With stripy wallpaper and sprucely comfy armchairs, and with swathes of linen chintz in some rooms, panelling in others, the interiors are a contemporary take on traditional British country style. Read expert review From £126per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Lake District Lucknam ParkWiltshire, England 9Telegraph expert rating The hotel sits within a 500-acre estate that encompasses meadows, paddocks and woodland. The main building is a beautiful, symmetrical, creeper-covered Palladian mansion dating from 1720. Its public rooms are opulent and elegant, with a traditional country house feel. They include a panelled library, a drawing room with a corniced ceiling, an ornate fireplace as well as tassled curtains and sofas, and The Park Restaurant, laid out with white-clothed tables under a sky-painted ceiling. Read expert review From £230per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wiltshire Lords Of The ManorUpper Slaughter, Cotswolds, England 8Telegraph expert rating The oldest parts of this mellow-stone manor house date from around 1649, with gables, wings and bay windows added in later centuries. Traditional rather than style-conscious, the public rooms are furnished with antiques. The 26 rooms in total split into five categories, comfortably furnished with embroidered silk throws on beds and soft lighting. The Michelin-starred restaurant is a key reason for staying at this hotel. The £69 three-course dinner menu may include starters of squab pigeon or foie gras with smoked eel and mains of Gloucestershire Old Spot suckling pig with rhubarb or local venison. Read expert review From £150per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in the Cotswolds Hotel EndsleighTavistock, Devon, England 9Telegraph expert rating Built in 1812 as the holiday home for the Duchess of Bedford, Georgiana Russell, this wildly romantic, chintz-free country estate, run by Channel 5’s Hotel Inspector, Alex Polizzi, is steeped in royal history. It’s a verdantly gardened, Grade 1-listed Eden between Dartmoor and Exmoor, with shell houses and hidden glades for romantic tête-à-têtes. The cream teas are worth the journey alone: a help-yourself affair of just-baked scones accompanied by massive urns of clotted cream and fruit-laden strawberry jam. Breakfasts, too, are a cut above the rivals. Read expert review From £198per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Devon The House at BeaverbrookSurrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Step into a bygone era of English high society, original artworks and antiques at this luxurious country house hotel, where press baron Lord Beaverbrook entertained world leaders and literary greats. Grandeur and opulence ooze from every room, beautifully designed by Susie Atkinson: A cosy morning room with log fire and plump, squishy sofas offers stunning views of the North Downs and Italianate garden. The library's shelves heave with weighty tomes, and the UK's first home cinema, where Beaverbrook and Sir Winston Churchill discussed the war's progress, still has the original wood-panelling and lighting. Read expert review From £225per night • The best hotels in Surrey Bovey CastleMoretonhampstead, Dartmoor, England 9Telegraph expert rating This grand stately pile on a sporting estate in Dartmoor National Park caters for every whim, whether rugged outdoor pursuits or fine dining and pampering. Inside, there’s a heated swimming pool and whirlpool with deckchairs overlooking the grounds, plus steam room, sauna and gym, while the ESPA Spa offers an extensive range of treatments. Outside, in the 275-acre grounds, there’s an 18-hole championship golf course, tennis courts, a croquet pitch, archery and rifle range, putting green, helipad and beautiful lakeside walks to be had. Read expert review From £112per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels on Dartmoor Great FostersEgham, Surrey, England 9Telegraph expert rating Italian gilt furniture, exquisite Flemish tapestries, elaborate Jacobean fireplaces and a one-Michelin-starred restaurant are the crowning glories of this luxury country-house hotel – once a 16th-century royal hunting lodge used by both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Oak paneling, beautifully-carved Jacobean fire-pieces plus a secret staircase – even 17th-century graffiti – await guests who enter the Grade I-listed building via a low wicket door. Traces of royal ancestry are everywhere, in Elizabeth’s coat of arms above the porch, and on the ceiling, dating from the 1500s and decorated with Queen Anne Boleyn’s personal crests. Read expert review From £122per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Surrey Wales Palé HallLlandderfel, Gwynedd, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating Complete with spire, porte-cochère and a grand entrance hall, hand stencilled by the owners, this mansion feels regal and is astonishingly well preserved. The wealth of period features: stained-glass, tiles, wood panelling, chandeliers, fireplaces and so on, are complemented by Angela Harper’s decoration, making liberal use of antiques, Zoffany and Sanderson wallpapers, paintings (including Snowdonia artist Rob Reen’s striking canvases of sheep) and collections of glass. Read expert review From £199per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Gwynedd Gliffaes Country House HotelBrecon Beacons, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating What’s not to love? Down a rural track, Gliffaes reclines peacefully in 33-acre grounds in the shadow of the Black Mountains and on the edge of the River Usk. With antique dressers, floral drapes, retro Roberts radios, and carpets you can sink your toes into, the look is traditionally elegant, never twee. Excellent restaurant. Read expert review From £110per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Bodysgallen Hall and SpaLlandudno, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The medieval core of a fine 16th-century mansion, the tower was built as a lookout for Conwy Castle. The higher you climb, the older its spiralling staircase becomes: Victorian at the bottom, 13th-century at the top. The encircling view is enthralling. As you turn, first Conwy Castle, then Snowdonia, then the sea and Anglesey, then Great Orme, catching the golden light, and lastly Llandudno, with the promise of its marvellous 19th-century promenade, come into view. Read expert review From £185per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The most romantic hotels in Wales Llangoed HallPowys, Wales 9Telegraph expert rating The house itself, redesigned by Clough Williams-Ellis in 1912, has great presence. Later bought and restored by Sir Bernard Ashley, widower of Laura, family photographs, as well as his fine collection of early 20th-century British paintings, including a collection of prints by James McNeil Whistler abound. Guests are encouraged to relax, curl up on sofas and play the piano. Read expert review From £99per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales The GroveNarberth, Pembrokeshire, Wales 8Telegraph expert rating The hotel is set in 26 acres of grounds amid deep countryside, with distant views of the Preseli Hills. The main building is a handsome three-storey residence with Georgian proportions and distinctive Arts and Crafts panelling and fireplaces. The lounges – cosy yet elegant, with real fires, window seats, plush sofas and modern prints and paintings of coastal Pembrokeshire – set the tone of the whole property. There are 26 rooms in total. Expect treats such as the softest of sheets, posh toiletries, thick towels and house-made biscotti. Read expert review From £145per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Wales Scotland The Gleneagles HotelAuchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating Built in the 1920s as a railway resort hotel, the design is Scottish Baronial meets French chateau, with all the opulent comfort of a grand country house on steroids. (A dull-looking modern addition to one side is easily ignored). It’s so big you need the map provided when you arrive, but this five-star formality comes with a splendid sense of ease: time seems to slow from the moment the kilted doorman welcomes you to the hotel. Read expert review From £265per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels in Scotland Inverlochy Castle HotelFort William, Highlands, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating No bows to passing fashions here. Moving with the times means waterfall showers, Bang & Olufsen stereos and televisions, while the unashamedly country house style - all swags, gilt, silk and brocade, sparkling crystal, polished wood and an all-pervading sense of time suspended, remains. Nowhere else makes grandeur so cosy, combining Jacobite rose wallpaper, Venetian chandeliers and French Empire-style ceiling frescos with perfectly judged élan. Dinner begins with a drink by the fire in the Great Hall, followed by a delightfully light-handed five-course menu with a distinctly Highland accent. Read expert review From £295per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • Top 10: the best Scottish castle hotels Isle of Eriska HotelArgyll & Bute, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating Calm and solitude are assured in a haven of herons and badgers, where the loudest sound is likely to be a fishing boat puttering over tranquil water. The trappings of Victorian wealth and privilege pervade drawing rooms filled with deep sofas, fireplaces and books in the imposing granite and red sandstone Big House. Elegant and comfortable without being stuffy, the ambiance is warm and welcoming, with soft, bright furnishings and piles of wellingtons by the front door of the oak-panelled hall. Carry on, Jeeves. Read expert review From £330per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com • The best hotels for spa breaks in Scotland Killiecrankie HotelPerth and Kinross, Perthshire, Scotland 9Telegraph expert rating With direct access to the beautiful Pass of Killiecrankie, the deep river gorge formed by the River Garry, the whitewashed 1840s house has been a hotel since 1939. There are 10 pretty and homely rooms, with antique pieces, thick curtains and very comfortable beds. No two are the same: they are all shapes and sizes and some of the bathrooms are very small. You’ll find a vase of fresh flowers and the Egyptian cotton sheets will be turned down while you are at dinner. Read expert review From £220per night • Scotland hotels: the best places to stay on Scottish lochs The Roxburghe Hotel And Golf CourseKelso, Scottish Borders, Scotland 8Telegraph expert rating The drawing room at The Roxburghe feels like a private house, with its family portraits and photographs, books and ornaments, and its welcoming groups of sofas and armchairs. Elsewhere there are tartan carpets, collections of whiskey and gin, plentiful open fires and the homely smell of woodsmoke. Bedrooms, some of which were designed by the Duchess of Roxburghe, are all different and decorated in traditional country house style. Three rooms have open fires, with coal and logs provided - the greatest luxury in a country hotel bedroom. Read expert re